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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28762704">Keeping it in the Family</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCadetDHD/pseuds/SpaceCadetDHD'>SpaceCadetDHD</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lost + Found [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Stargate Atlantis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>ADHD Characters, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asexual John Sheppard, Canon Related, Episode: s01e01-e02 Rising, Episode: s01e03 Hide and Seek, Episode: s01e04 Thirty-Eight Minutes, F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, John "abandonment issues" Sheppard, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Pre-Canon, References to Canon, Sentient Atlantis, alternate reading of episodes, au that follows canon, borrows heavily from episodes, i might never unsee this, neurodivergent Rodney McKay, prompt from a pic, references to a parent with cancer, soap opera in spaaaaaace, start at the beginning and ask "what if...", there may be feels here</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:08:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>58,772</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28762704</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCadetDHD/pseuds/SpaceCadetDHD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>John Sheppard’s a few years younger, a little angrier about life in general, and a moody trouble magnet. He knows two things: 1) he has a thing for cranky geeks named McKay, And 2) he doesn’t like Elizabeth Weir.</p><p>Elizabeth Weir is a few years older, just trying to jump through the hoops society tells her to in order to make a world she wants to live in, rather than the one she got stuck with. When the baby she gave up as a teenager shows up as an adult on her expedition roster with a chip on his shoulder, she has to figure out how to keep the whole project from going off the rails.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Rodney McKay &amp; Elizabeth Weir, Rodney McKay/John Sheppard, Simon Wallace/Elizabeth Weir, Teyla Emmagan/Elizabeth Weir</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Lost + Found [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2249754</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Stargate: Atlantis Kinkmeme 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Prologue - 1984</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">



        <li>In response to a prompt by
            Anonymous in the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SGAKink2020">SGAKink2020</a>
          collection.
        </li>
    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This was sparked off of a prompt in the SGA kinkmeme and I might never unsee it now that I went there. Hopefully it meets the challenge!! But these might not be the family feels y'all were looking for.<br/>Also... All of the apologies to Torri cuz she's actually *younger* than Joe.<br/>Also-also... pretty sure this is gonna turn into a series. Sigh.<br/></p><hr/>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Everything he hated always happened in the dining room. His friends didn't have dining rooms, they had normal houses with a kitchen table - emphasis on the kitchen - and they all helped make dinner and then went to watch tv, or went down to eat in the basement game room. They didn't sit around a huge table and stare at their food and talk about the newspaper, and their parents weren't jerks to each other, so that helped, too. As his dad complained that the steak was too well done, John would have given his left pinky toe to have been at Kevin's house, playing D&amp;D, eating TV dinners from those stupid tin trays. Fish and chips sounded better than steak and roast potatoes anyways. Not that his mom sucked at cooking or anything; his dad was just always a jerk at dinner.</p><p>John still had green beans on his plate when he asked to be excused from the table. The manners were a simple strategy; being polite would get him bonus points and distract from the vegetables he had no appetite for. Besides, his mom liked manners better.</p><p>His dad was another story.</p><p>"No. Finish your dinner, then we'll have a meeting," his father said. First off, John didn't like meetings. The dining room wasn't an office. Secondly…</p><p>"But I'm not hungry," John replied, annoyed.</p><p>"You don't have to be hungry to do as you're told," said his dad.</p><p>So John sat at the table, slouched over his plate, glaring as his little brother kicked his feet and ate his green beans one stalk at a time. Something nudged at his knee and John looked down at the bright blue eyes of his border collie, Rocky, begging ever-so-sweetly for table scraps. She wasn't supposed to be fed from the table.</p><p>But if they were supposed to have a meeting, the dining room table sat in his dad's office. So it was a desk, not a dining table. Fair game. Rocky was brilliant.</p><p>John followed his little brother's lead and picked up a green bean like it was a potato chip, manners out the window. He pretended to eat it and then, as he lowered his hand to collect another one, he dropped it for Rocky to pick up. The pass off was smooth and unnoticed, so the entire cup of green beans disappeared in the same fashion. Rocky's tail swept happily over the rug as she sat and scooped up beans off the chair edge beside him. Getting away with the trick almost made John forget he was waiting for a meeting.</p><p>It worked until his dad finished his meal and his mom jumped up to clear their plates. She noticed Rocky sitting patiently beside him, raised an eyebrow at him, but John pretended he hadn't done anything, and the plate was taken away. Davey still wasn't done eating because he had spent more time rambling about his stupid third-grade recess friends than he had spent stuffing his face, so his plate was left on the table to distract him from the meeting. Patrick Sheppard waited patiently for his wife's return before Mr. Big Shot CEO got down to business.</p><p>"Boys. Your mother and I have come to a decision," he began, and John figured well enough from his tone that the decision wasn't a good one. When the word "divorce" escaped into the conversation, he nearly jumped from his chair. His friend Bobby lost his mom that way and had to move and <em>everything</em>.</p><p>"No!" He raised his voice and his dad didn't like it.</p><p>"Excuse me?"</p><p>"No. You didn't ask us. You can't get a divorce because you didn't ask!" John stabbed a finger at the table because he was right and they had to listen to him. They were at the dinner table, he was allowed to talk there, so they had to listen. Davey had stopped chewing his food and stared at John, mouth hanging open with a green bean still in it. </p><p>"John, that's not how this works, sweetie," their mom said. John looked over at her quickly, surprised and somehow more worried than he had started out.</p><p>"Well why not? It's our family, too. You don't get to just <em>leave it…</em>" he replied.</p><p>"Nobody's leaving the family, John. She's still Davey's mother. She'll always be family," his dad said. John stared at his dad then, kinda stuck on how to use words for a minute.</p><p>"She's <em>my</em> mom, too!"</p><p>"Don't start this right now, John," said his father. John did stand up from his chair then, feeling like he needed to move, or run away. He was angry but he was scared, too, and he wasn't supposed to be scared. He could figure out what to do about being angry, but it wasn't so easy to sort out the other stuff.</p><p>"Fine. I want to stay with Mom."</p><p>"That's not- John. Settle down," his dad said. "That's not what's going to happen here."</p><p>John put the chair between himself and his dad across the table, shoved at it. "I'm staying with my mom!"</p><p>Davey was only eight, so none of what was said made any sense to him. He was an idiot, anyway. And he started crying because he saw their mom start to cry. John was too old for that, but he really wanted to cry, too, and that just made him more angry, and more scared, and more… whatever the other thing was. He wasn't okay, and it was <em>their</em> fault.</p><p>“Look what you did-” his dad began, pointing across the table to his little brother. </p><p>“No, you did it,” John shot back, anger sneaking out. “This was your idea. And it’s a shitty idea! That’s why I’m staying with mom!”</p><p>“Knock it off, John. You’re not her responsibility.”</p><p>“Patrick, if you say another word to that boy, you’re leaving this house tonight,” John’s mom said, her voice shaking. She sounded angry too, that was why she was crying. John saw it on her face. John clung to the back of the chair like he could anchor himself to it and not be ordered to his room. He wasn’t leaving until he knew he would still have a family when he was allowed out of his bedroom again.</p><p>“This is just his usual noise. He’ll be fine with it once-”</p><p>“No, Patrick. You and I can talk-”</p><p>“We had this arranged. Agreed that-”</p><p>“Well, plans change.”</p><p>“Unless the lawyers say otherwise.”</p><p>John watched his mom coax Davey out of his chair just to have his messy, snotty face get gravy smeared on her dress as she hugged him. She was Davey’s mom, always had been, so he could wipe his face on her dress if he wanted and wouldn't get in trouble for it. But John hadn’t met her until he was five, and she never got mad at him for having a dirty face when he hugged her, either. She was his mom, too. That was how it worked.</p><p>“We can talk to the lawyers tomorrow,” his mom said. “Tonight, I’m going to listen to my boys. If you don’t want to do that, there are plenty of other places you can go.”</p><p>She still had Davey attached to her side as she held a hand out to John. “Come on, John. Let’s go to the den for a little before bed.”</p><p>John was at her side in a flash and claimed his hug. Den later; hug first. His mom kissed the top of his head and stroked down his messy hair.</p><p>“Don’t baby them, Leila. John’s old enough,” Patrick said, frowning at them because he always did.</p><p>“Yes, he is. He’s old enough to be listened to. You had your way and it didn’t work. I’ll let you know if I have any better luck,” his mom said. Her voice sounded weird because John heard it from her mouth over his head, but he also heard it muffled by her chest because he refused to let go of the hug before she did. </p><p>She half-carried Davey and John wasn’t much easier to deal with, even though at almost thirteen he was only a few inches shorter than her. But she got them to the den where they camped out until Davey fell asleep. Their mom told them that it wasn’t about the family being together, it was about the family being happy when they were together, and that sometimes the only way to do that was to be apart, to do the things they wanted to do instead of the things they were supposed to do. She promised that they didn’t have to live in the same house to be a family but, this way, they could have two houses to live in.</p><p>“But I like my house,” said Davey. “I don’t want to move.”</p><p>“You won’t, sweetie. You’ll just get to have another house to go to, too. Like when we go to the cabin in Tahoe?” their mom explained. Davey seemed to follow. John sat in silence next to them on the couch, wrapped around his knees as he stared at them. It didn’t make sense to him. He was angry and he couldn’t say so because Mom didn’t want him to be and he didn’t want her to cry again. </p><p>“Why’d Dad say Johnny couldn’t stay with us then?” Davey asked.</p><p>“Because sometimes Dad says stupid things,” Mom replied.</p><p>“He said-”</p><p>“Because she’s not my mom. She’s your mom,” said John, the anger sneaking out. “My mom left already.”</p><p>His mom shook her head at him. “John-”</p><p>“Well, it’s true. I’m not dumb. You’re not her.”</p><p>“No, but you’re still my boy. And you’ll stay with us. You father will stop saying his stupid things after we talk to the lawyers about it,” his mom said. She almost smiled, but she was awful close to crying again. She held out her arm to ask for a hug and John resisted as long as he could. He unfolded and scooted over the couch to tuck under her arm on her free side, opposite his little brother. Davey had a hundred questions about it and Mom tried to answer them but John tried to pretend he couldn’t hear them. After a while, Davey snuck his hand up to grab on to John’s arm and he fell asleep like that. Mom called their dad in and he carried Davey to bed, then she walked John to his room.</p><p>“It’ll be okay, Johnny. I promise. I’ll always be where you can find me,” she told him. </p><p><br/>
</p>
<hr/><p>And she meant it, too. She got the lawyers to give her the house, and the boys stayed with her during the week, went to their dad’s on the weekends.</p><p>She got John through high school without mentioning the cancer. But when she started losing the fight, she finally had to tell him about it. She waited until he was home for Spring Break, the middle of his second semester at UCLA, where he was just barely eighteen and still staying out of trouble. He had wanted to know why his dad and new step-mom were moving back into their ranch, because that was the weirdest arrangement he had ever seen, no matter how huge the ranch house was. His mom and dad had gotten more like friends after Dad had moved out years earlier and the new wife moving in with the old wife seemed like a recipe for disaster.</p><p>“I’m going to need the help for surgery,” Mom told him, carefully. They were out together, taking care of Mom’s horse in the stables, so things were quiet. “It’s still your father’s house, John.”</p><p>That wasn’t something John had ever considered and it took him a moment. His dad had spent five years living somewhere else, when he owned the house his kids lived in. Just so he could play around with his secretaries. John finally shook his head. “He screws everything up.”</p><p>“John.”</p><p>John waved back toward the house and lowered his voice. “What? He does! Is he gonna marry all of them? This one’s barely older than <em>me</em>. She’s nice enough but-”</p><p>“When you make your mistakes early, you’ve got a lot to grow on. Your mom taught me that and I never even met her,” his mom said. John scowled at the hay bale he was wrestling into the stall.</p><p>“Not talking about her,” he said. He dumped the bale in the corner and started breaking into it. His mom stayed at the gate with her horse.</p><p>“No, baby. But we can when you’re ready,” she said. “In the meantime, your dad and Steph are here to help me for the next few months. Then we’ll see.”</p><p>For all John didn’t like his stepmoms, and all the fights he got into with his dad about taking over the family business, he was at least grateful to learn the man wasn’t a total ass. But his mom wouldn’t let him quit school to help with the surgery stuff. John offered, and he would have figured out how to be actually helpful if he moved home again, but his parents did something they hadn’t done in years and actually agreed with each other long enough to order him back to school.</p><p>The cancer won in the middle of the next semester and John went home again for the funeral. Dad had already started removing his mom’s stuff from the house, and Becky or whatever her name was took over more and more. They left John’s old room alone, though, and David’s room had posters and police tape up on his door telling everyone to STAY OUT. Their stepmom was only five years older than John and David didn’t like her very much. But Davey was still only thirteen, so he was stuck with her. John wasn’t. He feretted away what stuff of their mom’s he could, including her favorite photo albums, and stashed it in his old room where he and Davey could find it.</p><p>It was lucky he had grabbed the album. Inside, tucked away between the sticky film pages, were photos of him and Davey and their weird family, the horses and the dogs and the guys who drove the limos and the ladies who ran the house for a little while. And John’s birth certificate was in there, the one from the hospital, with two tiny ink-footprints and the flattened blue bow-ribbon punched in the top. He had seen it before but always skipped over it. He didn’t like it. The name typed on the line for the mother’s name wasn’t Leila Sheppard, like it said on Davey’s. It just said <em>Bethy W</em>. Whoever she was. For the first time, however, he noticed there was no mark at all for his father’s name.</p><p>It was a stupid, small thing. John wasn’t home to start shit with his dad. But why couldn’t he have been bothered to put his damn name on the birth certificate? John pulled it out of the album and took it into his dad’s study to ask. He slipped the paper onto the desk under his dad’s nose.</p><p>“I get that I’m a disappointment for the whole thing with not wanting to join the Board or whatever. But come on, Dad. Back then I was at least cute. I had that going for me at least, right?” he asked. Patrick looked up at him, one eyebrow raised.</p><p>“John, I don’t think now is a great time for this.”</p><p>John shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Or maybe it’s the best time.”</p><p>John was generally an easy going person, could fit in quietly anywhere, kissed up to his teachers and professors and flew entirely under everyone’s radar with a smile. Everyone except his dad. His mom had always said it was because they were too alike, Patrick knew everything John tried to get away with because he had already perfected the artform. And John resented that more than he liked, having spent so many years watching his dad sneak around and hurt her, but always still being his dad. He loved the guy, he respected him, but he knew well enough his dad was a jerk and a womanizer, not things John wanted compared to. Especially when he didn’t even have a girlfriend to bring home to the funeral, for moral support or showing off either one, which was some kind of added disappointment to the list. </p><p>And now Leila wasn’t around to translate for the two of them anymore, so John and Patrick would have to figure things out for themselves.</p><p>“I just want to know why you left it blank,” John said. His dad sighed and sat back.</p><p>“Because your mother left it that way,” said his dad. “And by the time Sharon and I were involved, the hospital was well out of the picture. Our names are on the official certificate-”</p><p>That was not the dismissal John had been expecting. He stalled out for a moment. “Who’s Sharon?”</p><p>“Sharon Weir. My first wife.”</p><p>John tried to remember her but he had only flashes and a few photos in the album. “The blonde lady in the pictures of me at the hospital?”</p><p>“Yes, her. But that wasn’t the hospital, Johnny. That was the airport. LAX,” his dad explained. He waved to the chair in front of his desk but John didn’t notice.</p><p>“What the hell was I doing at LAX when I was barely a week old?” John asked. His brain was still stuck on the fact that the woman’s name on the mother’s line on the birth certificate very definitely did not say <em>Sharon</em>.</p><p>“Going home to Virginia,” said his dad. He leaned over his desk and the glasses came off as Patrick rubbed at his temples. “Look. Sharon and I were-”</p><p>“Why do you keep calling her Sharon? The birth certificate says her name was Bethy.”</p><p>“John. Damnit.” Patrick’s complaint hung there for entire minutes as John started putting pieces together for himself. He finally did crash into one of the chairs in front of the desk as it hit him.</p><p>“Dad?” The fire of the fight he had walked in the room expecting to pick had faded out into fear. Patrick nodded.</p><p>“Yeah, kiddo. Let me figure this out,” Patrick said, waving him down as he stared at the desk blotter.</p><p>“I just gotta know...”</p><p>That seemed to spook Patrick and he nodded, quickly found words. “Bethy was Sharon’s sister. She was just a kid when she got knocked up, so the family sent her west to have the baby. It was just… it’s what you have to do. Especially back then, now things are a little more liberal… But Shar and I, we stepped up. We were established, we could afford it. Well, we wanted a family at the time. You were kind of… perfect.”</p><p>John stared, jaw slack, at the guy he had spent his whole life calling <em>Dad</em>. Apparently he was just barely an uncle.</p><p>“Is this a <em>joke</em>? I mean-”</p><p>“No, Johnny. Not a joke,” his dad said, shaking his head. His voice didn’t sound all that steady, either. “I never- Leila wanted to tell you but I… <em>Shit</em>.”</p><p>The silence hung there. John remembered his dad’s arguments when he was a kid, the times he had been a responsibility, not Leila’s. “Why- I mean, why didn’t you just send me back to Sharon or whatever then?”</p><p>“Shar disappeared when you were a baby. Look, the ‘70s sucked. She was bored and had money and found friends that - well, a cult is what they were. She disappeared and it was me and you. And about a year after that, Sharon died. For godsakes, she was twenty-two years old. I was just twenty-five. I didn’t know what to do. But it just stayed you and me after that. I wasn’t going to send you off to her family. You were my kid. That’s how that works.”</p><p>“Except I wasn’t,” John realized. “I’m not.”</p><p>“That’s bullshit, John. Don’t start.”</p><p>“I mean it. You could have sent me back.”</p><p>“To what? A kid? No. You’re talking nonsense. You’re my family, not theirs. Then and now, understood? Just like Leila.”</p><p>“But that’s why you didn’t want me to stay with Mom.”</p><p>“What, because you’re my son, not hers?”</p><p>“No more yours than hers,” John replied. “I just… chose her.”</p><p>That was a low enough blow that his dad-  that Patrick shut down after that.</p><p>“Well. You know what you know, don’t you?” Patrick asked. “And that’s all I have for you. The last I heard from Sharon’s family was a Christmas card when you were three. I can’t really help more than that. I think you’re stuck with David and I at this point.”</p><p>The boardroom exec didn’t know how to just turn off. He slipped into everything Patrick said or did. Stark, black and white logic, with no room for annoying feelings; emotions had no pay off. He didn’t care to use them, or he had just never learned how, and never passed that skill on to John. But John had learned from Leila, too, and he knew enough to recognize that he hurt. He didn’t know what all he was feeling just then, but pain was in there somewhere. John didn’t have Leila around to ask about the others, so he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. </p><p>John spent the next few hours in the stables, mucking stalls and tending a few of the horses. Just before the sun started going down, he saddled up his horse, an ornery silver Arab named something five words long that answered well enough to Blue, and they went out for a run. John didn’t want to be home, didn’t feel like he belonged there at all. But he was just as afraid to leave for fear he would never make it back. He didn’t know what to do with any of it. Riding was at least a familiar freedom he knew what to do with.</p><p>The only other time Patrick ever mentioned the conversation from the study was when John finally did leave to go back to school after Thanksgiving break. </p><p>“This is your home, John. Your family. It will be here for you when you sort this out,” Patrick told him, gruff as ever.</p><p>“Seems more like Davey’s,” John replied with a shrug.</p><p>“I’m not telling David a damn thing. You’re his brother,” Patrick said. The “<em>Knock it off,</em>” was in his tone, but he didn’t say it. “You both just lost your mom. Give yourself a break.”</p><p>It still hurt double and John left it alone. David showed up then, asked if he was leaving. John nodded.</p><p>“Back to school?”</p><p>“Yeah, buddy.”</p><p>David nodded acceptance of that and tackled him into a hug. John never could figure out how to tell him. He didn’t know how to tell him when he quit school, either.</p><p>A friend saved him from a little bit of a freefall that Spring semester as he rode out the last of the tuition that had already been paid. She said flying planes was better than sex and made everything else disappear, and that sounded like a damn good deal to John. When she introduced him to the recruiter, with the uniform and the patches with the wings, John was sold. He had the grades and the pedigree for the officers’ track, but the recruiter didn’t know any lawyers who flew F-14s. UCLA was dropped like a hot rock as mathematical engineering became the most fascinating thing in John’s world. He changed his spring course load to transferable classes, spent all summer brushing up on technical stuff, and moved to Stanford for the fall.</p><p>Patrick Sheppard didn’t approve of the change. He didn’t like the major, he didn’t like the school, he didn’t like the entirety of the San Francisco Bay Area, and he didn’t like that John was letting the Air Force pick up the tab.</p><p>“They liked my last name, Dad,” John said, shrugging it off when he went home for Thanksgiving again. “Apparently Grandad made General before he bought into the whole R&amp;D side. I’m still in the family business. That’s what you wanted.”</p><p>Patrick wouldn’t even look at him for a half hour after that. John went back to school smug as hell.</p>
<hr/>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 2004</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The world had somehow managed to become impossibly small and overwhelmingly huge all at once. All because of aliens. Goddamned aliens. They were very real, very complicated, and even after four months living and breathing military space technobabble, Elizabeth had a lot of catching up to do. There were entire cultures to be learned about and they already knew a great deal about a few of them. </p><p>Elizabeth had a place to start. Boxes and boxes of places to start. And it would all have to be relocated for her to the outpost in Antarctica, which didn’t make people very happy with her, but it would have to be done. Every scrap of knowledge could be ultimately helpful in getting the Ancients’ technology up and running. If any of the known Tau’ri civilizations had a strong enough overlap, the people working the snow-bound base would need to know.</p><p>
  <em>Shit. Snow.</em>
</p><p>Elizabeth was going to need warmer clothes. Her go-bag in her trunk had been very light, the wrong kind of professional, and her borrowed jacket wouldn’t be enough for the long term. So, then, clothes it was. She had twelve hours before they were due to send her back to the base. Barely enough time to shop for winter gear, pack, and close up the house for an extended stay. She would have to call her sister, ask her to take care of a few things…</p><p>The thought floored her. Elizabeth stared at the back of the drivers’ seat in front of her, her brain momentarily stuck. <em>Simon</em>. She had forgotten Simon. How the hell had she forgotten her fiance? Aside from the fact that she had barely seen DC in months, let alone lived there long enough to spend any time with the man. Her sister lived an hour away from the house in DC and would not be at all interested in feeding and caring for her dog when Simon lived in the same house as the dog.</p><p>“God, I’m tired,” Elizabeth realized. It was fully justified, after the busy week. After <em>months </em>of busy weeks. Simon was probably tired of her promises to be home on the weekend turning into IOUs and rambling emails with a lot of alien-shaped holes in what had otherwise started out as humorous anecdotes of her day as an interim military base commander, because that in itself was funny enough. Somewhere along the way, the past few months of her life had gone entirely off the rails and she didn’t have the first idea if there would ever be any kind of normal again. Or if she would want it to.</p><p>One thing was abundantly clear, however: twelve hours would not be enough time to fly home to DC, find cold weather gear, and pack. It was a friday, so Simon would be at work the entire time anyway.</p><p>Elizabeth asked the driver to stop on the way for a very, very large coffee, and a half hour later was deposited at her apartment - the one she did live alone in, nine days out of the week for the last few months, dog-free - with instructions to be ready for pickup at nineteen-hundred. <em>Right</em>. Because a flight in twelve hours would still mean travel time and a briefing before she left. <em>Great</em>. The sixteen ounce coffee would not be enough, but at least she could try to sleep on the plane.</p><p>Two hours later, the warmer wardrobe had been acquired and Elizabeth returned home to her temporary apartment to start the next stage of preparations. It was a rental, pre-furnished, with nothing in it that hadn’t shown up there in her suitcase three months earlier, aside from a few books and dishware, a couple of throw blankets. Most everything of hers found its way into a suitcase once again, though the dishware and books were left to the mostly empty shelves for the next tenant.</p><p>She had a mental list of business to take care of - turning in short-notice to the landlord, canceling the newspaper deliveries, - that required a few phone calls and emails while the laundry ran. It was welcome, as it meant she had an excuse to sit down and focus for a little while on something that wasn’t packing. Another coffee disappeared while she was at it. Before five pm, Elizabeth was ready to leave the rented apartment behind, and she still had two more hours to kill before the base would send for her. And one last load of laundry in the dryer. That was either enough time for a nap or for a necessary phone call.</p><p>The nap was tempting. The phone call was going to be brutal.</p><p>In the interests of her peace of mind, the phone call won. She missed Simon and owed him much more than a phone call. This was not a part of the job he had signed up for. But Elizabeth had worked too hard to make the world a better place in a general sense; there was no way she could walk away from a chance to actually save it. She had personally seen it happen now, had watched as the amazing and the impossible somehow collided to prevent absolute global disaster, and she had to stay involved as long as she was able to help. The only downside was that she couldn’t explain any of that to Simon. Especially not over the phone.</p><p>And definitely not on his answering machine.</p><p>Elizabeth tried the house line, his cell phone, and left their code on his pager. She only left one voicemail at the house, kept it as short and to the point as possible under the very weird circumstances. He wouldn’t get the message until after a full shift and she knew it wasn’t going to go over well, even if it had been under the best of circumstances.</p><p>“Hi, it’s me. I was hoping to catch you before work, but - well, anyway! I’ve been reappointed to another base. Everything is going international these days, it’s amazing, really… Simon, I’ve got so much to tell you! But it will wait. I leave in a few hours and will be out of communication for a day or so. When I’m settled, I’ll let you know as soon as I can. I love you, Simon. And give Tippy a hug for me. Miss you both-”</p><p>The beep of the voicemail recording running out of time ended the call. Elizabeth stared at her cell phone and then checked her pager. She wondered what the rates would be on a call from Antarctica but was too tired to call her provider to find out; her private phones never worked on base anyway. They would have to make-do with emails until she could figure something out.</p><p>With the unexpected time on her hands, Elizabeth changed out the last of the laundry and then curled up on the couch for a nap. She was going to need it. </p><p>The reports from the Antarctic outpost over the last month had outlined nothing but delays and frustrations, from structural issues with the ice removal, to personnel challenges that were hard enough to deal with over emails and grainy conference calls. The SGC had spent three months buried under red tape and it had only started loosening up in the last week, when everything hit at once. The SGC was staying under the military’s pervue and the base in Antarctica was going to be an experimental joint operation between the US government via the SGC and an international coalition of interested countries. </p><p>There was more than a little noise surrounding the Stargate program lately, and Russia was not making things easy, so the landscape of the program was going to have to change somehow. The Antarctic outpost would be their experiment in civilian control, and Elizabeth was much more at ease with the prospect of starting fresh, rather than trying to wrangle a military base into becoming a civilian program. But it still meant that the trouble that had plagued the base over the last few months had suddenly become her chaos to untangle. She would need a fresh start, which required more sleep than she’d gotten over the last week.</p><p>As it turned out, however, over-caffeinated sleep was neither restful or advisable. Her nap was short but dogged by nightmares. Aliens and explosions and spaceships that she had only seen schematics and reports of were somehow larger than life and full color in her mind. A memory mixed in of a yelling match with the former Vice President, but in the dream state, Elizabeth had lost her voice, couldn’t yell back at him. She watched as he bullied his way into opening the stargate and effectively reduced the SGC to rubble. In the dream, her efforts to escape the alien firepower-siege of the underground compound sent her into a dead-end room, with low, eerie lighting, and Jack O’Neill in a frosted stasis pod. </p><p>Elizabeth woke herself up then. Soon-to-be Brigadier General Jack O’Neill was alive and well and, according to the information Elizabeth had been given that morning, would be taking over his duties as Commanding Officer of the SGC that evening. Why that one image from the nightmare out of all the others had been enough to cut through the dream and startle her, Elizabeth didn’t know, but she woke up anxious and distressed. She declared nap time over with and went to look for her pager and phone in the hopes Simon had gotten back to her.</p><p>A moment later, there was a knock on the door. Elizabeth noted the ‘no messages’ on her pager as she walked to the front door, a little distracted as she answered it. It was her landlord, which wasn’t terribly surprising, and his son. The child on the man’s hip was admittedly very unexpected and Elizabeth stared in open surprise when the toddler threw an empty juice box at her from her doorstep. The blond little boy let out a peel of laughter as his father apologized and stooped to collect the trash.</p><p>It was an impromptu walk-through for the move-out and Elizabeth turned over her keys. She could lock the door behind her when she left and the owner would be back later, without the toddler, to do a more thorough cleanup. It was the easiest apartment move-out experience Elizabeth had ever taken part in, with the surprise guests gone in five minutes.</p><p>Their visit left Elizabeth technically homeless in Colorado until the driver was due from the base. It was an odd realization and certainly not something she had expected. Her life had changed drastically in a few months, from stable work with the university and various government jobs, to dropping everything at the request of the President and relocating to an ice-bound rock at the bottom of the planet. It certainly wasn’t where Elizabeth had expected to be at forty-eight years old, living out of a suitcase and missing her fiance. It certainly wasn’t boring, but it wasn’t the first woman president, either. </p><p>The bright laughter of the toddler echoed around in her tired mind. It was a sudden reminder that her life had almost been very different once. If she had been two years older and Jonathon had been two years younger, maybe it would have even been okay. But freshmen and seniors only worked out in cheesy ‘80s movies, and there was no way around the strict expectations of her parents, for her or her sisters. </p><p>Thirty-odd years later, Elizabeth knew with hindsight that she wasn’t cut out to be a mother, not back then when she was barely sixteen, and not now when she was living on the move, balancing negotiations with world governments between reading up on the latest discoveries regarding alien languages, technology, and weaponry. The world was different, much bigger, but there was no fixing the backwards, impossible version of it she had lived in as a kid.</p><p>But every once in a while, the questions snuck up, the worry and the curiosity. She had lost contact with her sister’s family when her parents sent her to finish her high school years in a private boarding school, and Sharon had died before she graduated, which only made their parents more protective, more obnoxious, more controlling. There was no way back then to find out where her sister’s husband had taken their son; her parents wouldn’t even tell Elizabeth the little boy’s name. No pictures to know who he looked like. Elizabeth had been red haired and freckled back then, but Johnny was bright blond. </p><p>Now all Elizabeth remembered of her short-lived beau was his obnoxious sense of humor and short attention span. She didn’t even have any pictures of Johnny, not even the school year book, since she had been sent to finish out her freshman year at their aunt’s in Los Angeles rather than anyone in town find out Larry and Dorothy’s baby daughter had shamed the family for falling pregnant by sixteen. That was how it went. It was one of those choices that had been made for her, and one she would never know the outcome. </p><p>Truth be told, Elizabeth had the resources now to find out anything she wanted to know, but she was afraid to look into it, afraid to find out what happened to the child she was never allowed to meet. He was someone else’s son. She had lucked her way into getting him a good family, and at sixteen it had been the best she could do. And she generally believed it had to have worked out for the best, aside from those surprising moments that snuck up on her.</p><p>Elizabeth shook herself out of it when the dryer alarm went off. She still had to finish the last of her packing. No more time to wonder about blond-haired babies and the alternate universe where they lived as her family. Based on reports she had read from the SG teams, alternate universes weren’t all that much fun, anyway, so she definitely didn’t need to jinx herself now that she would be dealing with the SGC more.</p><p>After more coffee, a fast-food dinner, and a final debrief with O’Neill and SG-1, Elizabeth’s last action in Cheyenne Mountain was the formality of playing hostess of ceremonies over Jack O’Neill’s promotion to Brigadier General. She looked over the notes that had been prepared for her and Elizabeth had to catch the table’s edge to keep herself upright. She stared from the notecards to the soon-to-be Brigadier General.</p><p>“Excuse me. Is this an error?” she asked. “This… says your name is Jonathon O’Neill.”</p><p>Jack frowned and squared his shoulders. He reached for the card and snagged a pen from Walter without bothering to ask, then scribbled out the formal name she was expected to read out. He wrote <em>JACK </em>in all capitals above it, very clear and determined on that. </p><p>“Just a typo,” he assured her. “Walter got his lines mixed up. Happens all the time.”</p><p>As a matter of actual fact, Walter didn’t often get much mixed up; Elizabeth was fairly certain the mountain would go into accidental lockdown three days a week without the man there to keep the various SG teams organized and out of earth-side trouble as much as he did. The notion that he couldn’t read a personnel file was beyond ludicrous. But Elizabeth had been around Jack O’Neill just long enough to know better than to expect a straight answer from the man. </p><p>It was still enough to trigger a mild panic. O’Neill was a common enough name. Someone who was so very adamantly <em>JACK </em>would never have been a <em>Johnny </em>to anyone when they were in high school. Elizabeth caught herself staring at the man, trying to remember back to when she was fifteen and in love with a beat up sports car and a leather jacket and the school’s hockey team. She saw only an ornery old military general with dark hair that had gone white, so many years of saving the Earth that even his smile was filtered to sarcasm. There was nothing there that said they were the same man she had met when she was younger, even cutting through her cluttered memories to what she had known of Johnny. They had a last name in common, but that was it.</p><p>Elizabeth shook herself out of it, angry and annoyed with herself for having let herself get so tired and run down that a random child showing up on her porch could throw her off her game for entire hours. She forced a reset and made it through the ceremony without incident. Her focus returned when she stood in front of the stargate and her professional, business-brain kicked in and moved her far away from the afternoon’s meltdown. </p><p>An hour later, Elizabeth and her luggage were loaded onto the plane, along with Dr. Daniel Jackson. It was a long flight. She was finally able to catch up on sleep, even if the seats weren’t the most comfortable. The US Air Force didn’t exactly send civilians to the bottom of the world flying First Class.</p><p>On the ground at McMurdo, the base comms officer brought Elizabeth five missed messages from three world leaders that had already been looking for her while she was in the air. Everyone wanted a piece of the underground outpost she hadn’t even seen yet, and they wanted answers yesterday. Her team didn’t even know what would ultimately be required to keep the lights on yet.</p><p>In short order, she and Daniel met the first members of their Terra Atlantus team, most of whom Daniel had worked with her on getting screened and ready to go over the last month. The SGC had barely managed to keep itself intact under the strange policy shifts of the last few months, but no one in the White House wanted to risk losing the outpost that SG-1 had managed to find, so they still had to occupy it. That required a team, and there weren’t a lot of experts on Ancient technology out there to pluck from other departments, so the folks at the SGC were expected to provide the resources and recommendations, in amongst their other duties that had so conveniently been cut. Daniel and Lt. Colonel Sam Carter had brought in a few ideas, and Elizabeth had looked at the international teams submitted for consideration through the White House and the UN. They had a larger pool of candidates than they had positions, and very few of them had any experience outside of their own planet. </p><p>They ended up with a handful of civilian contractors from multiple disciplines around the world, and a whole platoon of armed, American military babysitters. And all of them were stuck at McMurdo until the military engineers finished their work at the city O’Neill had identified as the Ancients’ Terra Atlantus. The ice had to be cleared away without endangering the city underneath, the structure had to be fortified and safe to live in, and they had to have communication lines set up that could at least get them a relay and data network. It was no small project, and that was before they dove into the secrets the compound kept so well hidden. It had been well over a month since all of the work had been started and it moved with the predictable government speed, with everything filled out in triplicate, requisitioned and justified, all in theory on theoretical budgets and a theoretical staff. Nothing moved quickly, especially with the fingers of foreign governments poking at the coveted pie.</p><p>The base at McMurdo gave Elizabeth an office to work from for a few days, one with a mostly-reliable internet connection and phone line. Even Daniel was stuck killing time, which certainly wasn’t ideal considering he was only consulting on-loan from SG-1. He looked over photographic documentation and maps from the engineers’ excavation work so far, impatient to be cleared to go to the site himself. The other contractors had nothing to do, and McMurdo wasn’t a very large base, so there were a few temper flares as everyone got to know each other, apparently only out of the duress of boredom.</p><p>From what little socialization Elizabeth was able to do between emails and grainy satellite calls, the team they had chosen seemed an intelligent lot, and it showed in their interactions, not just their resumes. Some were louder than others about it, but the loudest of them was a young man named Rodney McKay who Daniel would reluctantly vouch for; Sam Carter had requested the man’s expertise be assigned to the new base, so maybe his high IQ wasn’t just there for his version of small talk. Daniel said the man came with a warning label from Sam; McKay was an acquired taste, but one of the best qualified they would find, short of stealing someone from the SGC. (That, of course, wasn’t an option.)</p><p>The moment they did finally make it to Terra Atlantus, McKay started loudly listing off requests for tools and equipment - flood lights, generators, different types of massive pieces of technology that had all been on the approved lists - that would need to be brought in from McMurdo. One of the team actually bothered to write down what the man said, while virtually everyone else dispersed to find their assigned quarters and stow their luggage first. It was obvious the man hadn’t built himself a fan club at McMurdo, or before if he had worked with any of them elsewhere, but it was just as clear that he was listened to. Elizabeth took note. </p><p>She settled in and found herself living out of a suitcase in a cold but beautiful room half the size of the one she had rented in Colorado. There was no central “office” like she had been used to in every previous job, not when the city operations were still held together with extension cords and generators, and the focus was on getting the place fully functional rather than explore the many ice-logged hallways for open rooms to claim at random. Until the team figured out how the Ancients had powered the base for regular, daily use, how they had even turned on the lights, there wasn’t much to be done outside the glare of the flood lamps and personal-space-heaters.</p><p>Elizabeth’s job was to track that progress, translate their findings into reports that could be declassified safely enough to pass along to the various stakeholder countries. She worked with Daniel to get an idea of what some of the stations might have been, relying on pure guesswork based on his exposure to other systems that overlapped with Ancient culture. They coached each other back and forth on the Lantean writings as the team uncovered them. </p><p>But it took two weeks for McKay and his team - because that’s what it quickly became, whether his detractors appreciated it or not - to get the conversion systems built for the Naqueda generators to power the base’s internal operations. Daniel had to get back to the SGC once O’Neill had fully “negotiated” for permission to use the stargate again. He had kept busy, even without the lights on, but he only had a day or two with the Ancient computer system, or as much of it that the generators could power. McKay’s team was still working on getting them interfaced with the SGC computers and that was going to take even more time than getting the power figured out.</p><p>“We have the basics sorted, maybe we can logic our way into the rest, but this isn’t the soft sciences, Dr. Jackson,” Rodney pointed out, his heavy sarcasm showing well enough his opinion on those. “We can’t just take a guess at what makes them work and <em>poof</em>, we’re in. We’re talking two different languages, here. It has to go in on one and out on the other and we’re missing the Rosetta stone. And we have to build that.”</p><p>“Yes, Rodney, I get how languages work,” replied Daniel, with a fair amount of patience despite their mutual annoyance with the many roadblocks on their shared project so far. </p><p>So Daniel had limited access and then he was gone, back to the SGC, and Elizabeth was the closest thing they had to an Ancient translator after that. She had been working on it for months, since noting how very close the language was to Latin when Jack had started speaking it. She was confident she knew what Daniel knew on it, though, and when the team did uncover more, she could help out in more than just an administrative capacity finally.</p><p>It was lucky timing, as it turned out, pure chance. Thanks to an email exchange with Sam, Elizabeth happened to know when SG-1 was scheduled to do an off-world run after Daniel had returned, and she had made note of it out of recent habit. So one day, when Rodney started ordering status reports from the various operational consoles in Terra Atlantus, an order that happened to coincide with the scheduled stargate activation, Elizabeth took notice. She left their small communications corner of the main operations room and wandered out to watch Rodney buzz from station to station.</p><p>“What’s happened?” she asked.</p><p>“Power surge, all over,” Rodney reported, not even looking up at her. “And Robertson’s station started rejecting commands from the coding program he’s running.”</p><p>“What coding program?” Elizabeth asked of Robertson, their poor, beleaguered, general IT guy. Robertson looked frustrated and alarmed, just as distracted as everyone else, but he turned to face Elizabeth as he started to answer her question.</p><p>“We have the basics of the Ancients written language, but it predates binary, so we have to-” he began. Rodney rolled his eyes as he not-entirely-impolitely waved the programmer out of his chair.</p><p>“We have to teach our computers to talk to their computers and that takes a fair bit of trial and error. So when a power surge - which is an entirely separate operation - can override a background translation program and start running operations in its own language without interference, entirely randomly… That’s a problem,” said Rodney.</p><p>One of the more pleasant, math-minded geeks of the team, a technician named Zelenka, peeked over the back of one of the massive computer terminals they had brought in to try to keep up with the information load they expected from the Ancient technology. “Do you suggest the system was hacked?”</p><p>“Hacked, no. Hijacked, yes,” replied McKay. Elizabeth eased back to stay away from the very intense energy radiating from Rodney. </p><p>“Could it have something to do with the stargate?” she asked. She had been hoping to avoid startling the man with the question, but Rodney hardly seemed to register that she had said anything at all. He sat back a moment later, stared at his laptop screen, and then the interface on the Ancient console, and made a surprised “Huh.”</p><p>“What does that mean, Rodney?” Elizabeth asked.</p><p>“It means it stopped. It’s working now.”</p><p>“Oh. Well, then, good work.”</p><p>“Not that I’m arguing, but I didn’t do it,” Rodney replied. He finally looked over at her. “What’s this about the stargate?”</p><p>Elizabeth raised an eyebrow at him. “SG-1 was due to go off-world at 1400 MST. That would be roughly three minutes ago here.”</p><p>“Huh,” Rodney said again. He poked at his laptop. “Could you confirm their dial times for this. And find out when the next dial out is scheduled for.”</p><p>McKay wasn’t the most practiced at asking questions politely, but he returned Robertson’s chair to him and hurried back to what he was working on before the power surge had interrupted him. But Elizabeth gave an amused nod and turned away to go make a few phone calls.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>There was something karmic to the fact that John's military fate was to be decided in a conference room in the gilded former offices of some CEO. They made-do with what they had in the service, and they had a bunch of generals and a conference room. So he sat at a big, glass-topped table and listened to everyone go over his file, listened to his lawyer make his case. </p><p>John tuned out most of the other side's case, not overly interested in the refresher history of his missing team and the crashed helicopter. He had done his time with the shrink on that, and the random twinge in his shoulder was still a rough enough reminder. All that mattered was that he brought back who he had to bring back and it wouldn't happen again. Any missions John Sheppard would fly going forward would be officially authorized and knowingly sanctioned by the proper chain of command. That was the deal. He would repeat that until someone gambled on it and decided to let him fly again. </p><p>But nobody asked him for his opinions on the whole court-martial thing, that's what the lawyer was for, and John sat silently in his dress uniform at the end of the table. He sat tall and tried not to look bored, at attention and paying attention. There were a few spectators to the case, some that made sense and others that didn't. The stenographer made sense, the lawyers and their assistants made sense. The US Senators in their blue ties and their Old Glory lapel pins, maybe not so much sense. Sheppard tried to ignore them as they checked in with a few of the Generals, only one of whom John knew by sight as in his line of command. General Webber was on his side in the whole mess, or so he said, even if he couldn't overlook "the precedence of the thing."</p><p>Apparently it would be bad for general Air Force operations if pilots regularly took it upon themselves to fly chopper missions behind enemy lines and retrieve teams from under shot-down birds. And, frankly, after three weeks in a little box and one too many brushes with death as a hostage with the rest of the team he'd shown up to <em>rescue</em>, Sheppard could see the logic in that. </p><p>But he had still gotten them back, damn it. That had to count for something, right? Not everyone was crazy enough to steal a chopper twice on the same rescue mission, once from his own side and then turn around and successfully load it up with POWs and <em>steal it back</em> from the bad guys. It hadn't gone exactly to plan, but it ended up where John wanted it to. He just didn't want to have to go it alone like that ever again, so if the mantra was that he would only undertake flights under orders, then John Sheppard would only fly with approval.</p><p>"It would be a shame to lose a pilot as skilled as Major Sheppard," he finally heard his lawyer conclude. "And there were three lives saved for his efforts. He behaved honorably and ultimately in good faith to his training as an Air Force pilot. And we believe that is what the record should show."</p><p>After that, of course, the lawyers and the problematic Major were excused from the room. The Senators were a little slower to follow. Sheppard stared at the conference room door as it remained closed, the politicos he didn't know lingering behind it somewhere to weigh in on his case. A few minutes later the two men finally left the room. Broad smiles lit their faces as they saw John waiting in the lobby.</p><p>"Major Sheppard. I wanted to say, good work, son. You're a hero, and you should know that," said one of them, Senator Kinsey, as he shook John's hand. The other one, Senator Valley, or something like that, echoed his sentiment as John tried to figure out why the two men cared who he was, hero or not.</p><p>"Well, the Air Force has a lot of those, not so many who screw up quite as well as I did," he replied, talking behind a pasted on smile.</p><p>"Nonsense. You followed your gut, like a true patriot. You brought your team back. It's been all over the news, the whole nation knows the truth of it," said Kinsey. The smile faded a little at that as John's confusion threatened to win out. The news stories had left out the part about the pilot who disobeyed orders to bring back his team. The news knew four missing had escaped and returned home, they knew that two didn't make it, but they didn't know the truth of anything.</p><p>"Yessir," was all Sheppard could say, his training kicking in when the logic wouldn't compute. The Major could only fly with approval, and somehow these two had inserted themselves in the process, so he wouldn't argue. He could follow orders. If the orders were to let the Senators call him a hero, so be it.</p><p>"We needed that good old fashioned shot in the arm of patriotism, Major. You served your country in more ways than you know," Kinsey continued, more sober about the accolades. "Boy, did you deliver. You could go far, from here, you know. People are in your corner "</p><p>The implication that someone had called in favors didn’t sit well with Sheppard, he just couldn’t figure out how to ask about it. Valley nodded his agreement again, but was in general less of a schmooze than Kinsey. "Just keep your record clean. You've got a good family name behind you, Sheppard. Don't waste it on more of the hotshot moves. A court-martial is still a court-martial."</p><p>Sheppard stood a little taller and more attentive. "Yessir. That was a one-off. Not happening again, sir. This… has not been the most entertaining six months of <em>my </em>life, for all I apparently helped the Air Force."</p><p>"I imagine not," said Valley.</p><p>"But, damn. We can't beat the publicity," added Kinsey. He smiled again and thumped Sheppard on the shoulder. "As the man said, behave yourself, Major. Good luck."</p><p>And the two senators excused themselves from the borrowed offices then and disappeared. John looked to his lawyer, the open question on his face, and the woman shook her head.</p><p>"I'm not sure either, but leave it alone, John," she advised. Taking it as an order, John left it alone. But it sat at the back of his brain. He had been in the Air Force for ten years and could count on one hand the number of times someone other than the recruiter had mentioned his grandfather. Now, the family lineage he hadn't earned was being brought up by senators with some kind of stake in his career. <em>What the hell?</em></p><p>The Generals didn't take all that long to come up with their decision, but it felt like an hour wasting away in the lobby. Major John Sheppard kept his rank and was not discharged. There would remain a mark on his file, however, and he was removed from frontline duty. The team he had gone back for, what was left of it, had already scattered to VA hospitals or been sent home, only one of the three allowed back to work. And John was sent to McMurdo, as far into the middle of nowhere as a pilot could get, to get him away from the very publicity that had saved his career. He was a little bitter about that.</p><p>Six months later, Senator Kinsey became Vice President Kinsey, and that answered a few of John's questions. But he was still flying choppers and carriers over snow every few days, so it didn't really change his life much.</p><p>There wasn't a lot of interesting anything that happened at McMurdo, so there wasn't any possible way for John to find trouble. He just took his flight assignments and reported in, on-time, at every touchdown. There were a few hours of excitement on the base once, but John had been on another continent at the time. He was grounded there after flying out to pick up supplies and the orders were that he wasn't to fly back until the base at McMurdo gave the all clear. It took two days for that to happen, and then, by the time he got back, the runway had been shot up and some of the base's few buildings were missing chunks of their rooftops.</p><p>"What the hell happened?" Sheppard asked his CO, and the man just shook his head at him. </p><p>"Damned if I know," was all he would say about it. A few days after that, there was a lot of traffic back and forth, moving heavy equipment and engineers, but nobody knew a damn thing about <em>that</em>, either. Sheppard picked up as many of those flights as he could, trying to parse out the sudden interest in a chunk of ice that was even further from the middle of nowhere than he was, but there were a lot of <em>CLASSIFIED</em> stamps on the files the engineers carried, so he knew better than to ask outright.</p><p>A month or two later, the engineers were pulled back and they sent in a bunch of tech-nerds. A whole different round of equipment had to be taken out to the middle of nowhere, because, as it turned out, there was a base under the ice. Sheppard scooped up a bunch of back and forth miles moving people, and then their equipment, in the choppers that could handle it. It meant working at unloading things in the cold, helping some genius named McKay get boxes of computer equipment signed for and unloaded and to the elevator before anything valuable froze up in the cold. </p><p>McKay was cranky and bossy and amused John, but for fucks sake it was cold, and the guy never let him go down into the base for a coffee to warm up (and snoop.) But on John's third trip, Rodney brought up a Thermos of coffee for him as a peace offering. It was straight-up black coffee and it was hot and John sat in the chopper after it was unloaded and warmed himself up. Rodney left him the Thermos though, so it went back to base with Sheppard. He stuck tape on the side and scrawled 'McKay' on it with a Sharpie so he would remember to take it back when he got assigned the next round of tech-taxi. He even cleaned it out and everything.</p><p>All in all, John liked his exile to the snow. He got to fly. Things were quiet, mostly. And about a hundred miles closer to the poles sat a mystery he was slowly teasing out. Whether or not he ever got any answers for it wasn’t so important. Up in the air, he had things to pay attention to and monitor and keep his brain busy, just to keep the birds in the air against freezing weather and the glare of sunlight off endless snow. Back at McMurdo, he had a mystery to occupy his thoughts, the random interactions with a rumpled scientist to be amused by. </p><p>And when those ran him in too many circles, there was an archaic, crumbling bookshelf in the mess that served as the base library. The books were worn and tattered, either from being ignored or for being picked up and thrown around by military hotheads stranded and snowbound for most of the year, but occasionally someone like John would actually read one. He had read Dumas’ musketeers stories a few times over the year he was stationed there, a few outdated science journals, and was working up the determination to attempt the Tolstoy abandoned on the bottom shelf.</p><p>It wasn’t the excitement of the dry desert. But it was a good recovery from that last month he had spent on the frontlines and the six months that had followed it. John was a year and a half older, and probably wiser for it all, and he didn’t mind so much. For the most part, he loved his job, because he could fly. There was just that nagging feeling that he was missing out on something important, that he had skipped over where he was supposed to be. And every time that hit, he went out and breathed biting cold, dry air, and reminded himself that snow wasn’t sand.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After another month, the techs had gotten the power situation sorted out and things were somewhat settled on Terra Atlantus, which meant additional specialists and scientists working additional angles. They were starting to get a better idea of the scope of the project as they understood more about the size of it, and their little underground outpost was really more like a buried city. They couldn't power everything or explore everywhere, but they were uncovering more secrets day by day. All through it, Elizabeth had refined her team, brought on new experts, and let McKay and his ranting weed out the ones who wouldn’t cut it.</p><p>McKay had become a sort of canary in the coal mine for her. They were, after all, living under the ice. It was an extreme condition to ask anyone to tolerate, and Rodney’s abrasive style was no easier to deal with. But the man got results, of that there was no question, and Elizabeth adjusted to him easily. She was a natural negotiator, and Rodney McKay was a brilliant scientist with a poor social skillset, not a world-class tyrant dictator. As an educator and psych profiler, Elizabeth easily recognized the hallmarks of the autistic spectrum and that Rodney was somewhere on it. If people couldn’t adapt to their fellow’s challenges on a social level then they probably weren’t going to last long under the base’s perpetual threat of harm, either.</p><p>The team that was forming was sharp and effective. They had figured out the big stumbling blocks and the base was looking less alien every day. The power situation had been sorted out and people had settled in further from the central operations center. The random power surges problem had been adapted to, though they couldn’t figure out how to make it stop; it was definitely related to the stargate in Cheyenne Mountain and their working theory was that the city had once held a stargate if not the exact gate the SGC used. More of the ice had been carved away and more of the base was slowly being exposed. But Atlantus was still hours away from any help, sometimes longer, and the problems the international team encountered had proven genuinely dangerous, so the team was more like an expedition team every day. All of which led to the need for the world-class surgeon on staff and on site, one with his own level of field experience, and some academics work and specializations on the side.</p><p>Dr. Carson Beckett had been on the base for a little over two weeks and the poor man was driving Rodney McKay to a new level of exasperation.</p><p>A curious thing happened with their ice-bound outpost because of him. Parts of it lit up on their own when Carson Beckett wandered into the area, responding to his presence in ways that McKay and his team hadn’t accounted for. Not unlike the story of General O’Neill magically procuring a stasis pod from the walls, Carson had brought up the lights, opened doors that weren’t known to be doors, and could light up the Ancients’ operations chair. It just also happened that the man didn’t like doing so. It unnerved him as something unnatural.</p><p>There had been some analysis started by the SGC on what made O’Neill so uniquely suited to the alien technology his team had encountered, and Elizabeth had gotten that information transferred to the base for Carson to look into. As a testament to the fact that Elizabeth had chosen the right team for the job, it took the doctor only three days to come to an apparently miserable conclusion.</p><p>“There’s a certain genetic sequence in common between myself and your Brigadier General,” Carson reported, an oddly unsettled expression on his usually smiling face. “Aside from the standard human overlap, of course. But a very distinct set of proteins is activated that we otherwise currently don’t have mapped. We've little idea what it is, to be honest. It's usually genetic junk and it's only by complete accident that I noticed it. But… apparently… it’s what activates the Ancient technology in this hunk of ice we’ve found ourselves in.”</p><p>"Of course. I could have told you that much," replied Rodney, waving to the glowing screen on the wall behind Carson that the man had activated the very first time he walked into the room. It had scrolling Ancient symbols, all of it some kind of system status report that none of them had actually been able to isolate the source of; something was being monitored and the power values were low, and that was all they knew. Carson scrunched his nose, guilty, and ignoring it. (The doctor had adjusted to Rodney quite well and the two actually got along, from what Elizabeth had seen so far.)</p><p>"Yes. Well. The one bright side to this is that now we know what that isolated bit of code might be, we can, perhaps, set about inserting a bit of it in anyone else to see if they can't use it the same way," replied the doctor. That changed Rodney's tone rather suddenly.</p><p>"Wait. Really?" he asked. Elizabeth had to hide a smile at the man's hopeful, sincere expression where she was so used to seeing nothing but annoyance and arrogance. "So if, say,<em> I</em> were to have this particular DNA chain floating around..."</p><p>"Aye, yes, Rodney. In theory, we could prompt those proteins to activate, switch them on, as it were, and insert them into your system, to replicate harmlessly on their own, and interact with the technologies around us. Just as they are for me and the General, apparently," said Carson.</p><p>"In theory?" Rodney echoed, that little hopeful light fading. Carson nodded and shrugged, hesitant again with his news.</p><p>"Well, it's assuming your system accepted the expression in the first place. But before it even comes to that, we would need more than just two data points to compare to, wouldn't we?" The man spoke with an accent and Elizabeth could tell that the question was entirely rhetorical.</p><p>"Meaning what, exactly?" she asked.</p><p>"Meaning we can't be certain he's isolated the exact genetic sequence based off only two humans who can interact with the city's systems. He would have to find <em>more</em> of said humans. More tests than two," said Rodney, his frustration evident.</p><p>"And that's to say nothing of the testing required before we can actually attempt any kind of application of switched-on genetics, honestly," said Carson. He shook his head, apologetic. "I don't mean to get your hopes up, but I would like to explore the project. And would, of course, need a few things brought on."</p><p>There was no question that it was worth pursuing, so Elizabeth passed along the requisition requests for their on-site doctor to hobble together a lab where he could explore the genetics the city showed such a strong preference for. It was rather amusing, to Carson at least, that he was, in effect, his own lab rat. He was the only source of active DNA to fall back on, because while Elizabeth could get him the parts and pieces to call a lab, she couldn't procure him test subjects. Carson just applied his charming smile, asked for volunteers to compile a control group, and seemed to have enough to keep himself busy that way.</p><p>The ideal test subject would be access to Jack O'Neill more directly, but that simply wasn't likely to happen. General O'Neill stayed away from the city, busy with his own problems at the SGC. It was also unlikely because Daniel Jackson kept asking to be assigned to the outpost for a few weeks, and his boss made it clear they didn't have the archeologist to spare. Elizabeth had been looped in on every email chain request, <em>and</em> refusal, and tried not to take it personally. Despite O'Neill's distaste for "cities that could read his mind" Elizabeth was rather proud of the work her team had accomplished in only two months.</p><p>In the meantime, it was a very good thing that Carson and Rodney got on so well, because the scientist kept dragging the doctor into his own experiments with the city, and Dr. Beckett was not at all comfortable watching gizmos and whatsits light up when he touched them. It seemed to influence the effectiveness of the devices and very definitely drove Rodney up the ice-covered walls. McKay was intensely jealous and lectured him about looking gift horses in the mouth on a daily basis. Elizabeth was, for her part, as equally amused as she was in awe at what the Ancient civilization had somehow created and left behind for the rest of them to puzzle out.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>John snagged another taxi run out to the hole-in-the-ice base, this time actually flying human fare instead of boxes of tech. Brigadier General Jack O'Neill and his shadow, a Dr. Daniel Jackson, arrived at McMurdo too late to hop a flight out to the base. There were snow clouds over that way and John had gotten too used to <em>not</em> crashing his choppers to really risk it, especially because he knew from experience that they wouldn't let him hide out any storms under the ice and the weather had to be clear for a round-trip, not just the drop-off. Thankfully, his CO felt the same way and set the trip out for the following morning, weather providing. And Major Sheppard was not inclined to disobey non-flight orders he agreed with.</p><p>After a brief introduction and the official word on their travel situation, John was set loose to his usual duties and his CO took care of their grumpy guests. Well, one of them was grumpy. O'Neill wasn't a fan of the snow. But his buddy was all energy and, from what John witnessed of the pair in the mess hall, went out of his way to annoy the general. The guy had guts but John's money was on the Dr. Jackson character not being military. He was also very much in O'Neill's space and John kinda got the vibe that nobody was asking what the pair weren't telling. That, added to the fact that they were giving him another excuse to fly out to the hole-in-the-ice base, and John decided he liked them.</p><p>O'Neill was just as grumpy in the morning as he had been the previous night, so it seemed more or less a permanent feature rather than the fault of location or timing. John put a Thermos full of coffee in the man's hand as a peace offering before showing them to the waiting helicopter. Jack raised an eyebrow and accepted the gift with an approving nod. He helped himself as they walked out, and Jackson snagged the jug from him to read the tape.</p><p>"This is McKay's?" he asked. John nodded.</p><p>"He let me borrow it a week or so back. Apparently took pity on the fact that I freeze my ass off on these trips, unloading boxes and whatnot, and don't have the clearance to use the bathroom once I'm out there," he said with a shrug. Daniel huffed, amused, apparently.</p><p>"McKay doesn't take pity on anyone," he said.</p><p>"Well, someone did," replied John. "So just stash it in the break room or something while you're down there, if you would?"</p><p>"Huh. See, Jack, I told you," said Daniel. "Miracles do happen. This must be some kinda lucky trip."</p><p>"Jeeze, Daniel, don't say shit like that," complained O'Neill as they buckled into their seats. "There's still a lotta miles of snow between us and where we're going."</p><p>And the general was certainly not wrong. But the half-hour flight was through clear skies, optimal conditions, with the storms from the night before nowhere in sight over the expanse of white dunes and hills and glacier walls. John tried to keep his passengers talking, mostly to avoid the risk of boredom, but also hoping for tidbits on the mystery base. The doc got snoopy from the back seat, politely pulling Major Sheppard's flight history from him because he said he had now seen him fly three different helicopters in his trips to the end of the world.</p><p>"All that training just to play in the snow?" questioned O'Neill. "You could have gone anywhere."</p><p>"Fair to say I have been everywhere," Sheppard replied, cheerful about it. "I actually like it down here."</p><p>"I hate the snow," replied O'Neill, in case it wasn't obvious. "Even when it comes in different colors."</p><p>"At least it's not yellow," said Sheppard. Again, the surprised approval offered with a nod.</p><p>"I'll give you that," he said.</p><p>"I'll assume you mean sand," added Daniel. John just smiled to himself. His eyes tracked out over the horizon at all of the blinding white and he was glad it wasn't sand, too. There was something over a not-so-distant mountain peak though that caught his attention as out of place in the familiar landscape.</p><p>The radio blasted a warning in his ear then that wiped the amusement from the cockpit.</p><p>“All mechanical craft within range of this broadcast, turn off your engines and abandon ship immediately. We have a rogue drone that can seek a target on its own. All craft, full stop and cool down!”</p><p>“What the hell kinda message is that?” John muttered, still eyeing the oddity over the mountain.</p><p>“The kind you listen to,” replied General O’Neill. He waved a hand toward the ground. “You heard the man, park it.”</p><p>“Bit late for that, sir,” said Sheppard. “Hang on to something…”</p><p>As his passengers tried to sort out what their pilot was up to, Sheppard banked hard to drop behind a cold-packed cliffside for cover and climb up and over the trajectory of the weirdly glowing missile headed for them. It had to be locked on and John wasn’t gambling on cutting the engines doing them any good at all until he could put a little more distance between the chopper and the problem.</p><p>John learned in short order that O’Neill was a pilot because he could play back-seat driver worse than his dad did. It was amusing to realize he could disobey more direct orders in the space of three minutes than he had in his entire career just trying to save the General’s life. Not that O’Neill didn’t know how to fly, he could probably have done just fine anywhere else, but Sheppard had been flying this route for months, and that was an advantage when trying to outsmart a heat-seeking bastard.</p><p>John finally got enough distance and icy mountains between them and set the helicopter down, cut the rotors and ordered his passengers to bail. He and Dr. Jackson got out fine but O’Neill got tangled in his gear and was slower. By the time he hit the snow, the missile had blasted through a wall of rock and ice and found them. It headed straight for the General on the other side of the helicopter, by then twenty-five yards from where Sheppard and Jackson stopped to look back.</p><p>“Jack!” shouted the doc, and John had to catch his arm and haul him back to keep him from heading for the sure collision about to happen. But the missile didn’t strike, and it wasn’t thanks to Sheppard’s fancy flying. He had bought them time but that was all; the motors were still hot, and anything programmed for heat signatures would have aimed directly for it.</p><p>Instead, they rounded the nose of the helicopter and saw Jack crouched and hanging onto the door with one hand for balance on the uneven snow, while the other was reached out to catch the weird glowing drone like it was a football. The thing looked like a squid, bulbous black and glowing green head with bendy-looking tentacles on the other end, and it had stopped dead in the snow less than a foot away from O’Neill’s hand.</p><p>The General was not amused. He left the oversized glowing football exactly where it was and climbed back into the chopper to start yelling into the radio about Sam Hill and monster missiles and who exactly was trying to shoot him out of the sky this time… John wanted no part of that disciplinary and hung back away from his bird while Daniel dared to climb inside to keep Jack company. It was cold out on the snow, sure, but it was sounding pretty frosty in the cockpit, too.</p><p>After a few minutes, Jack stopped lecturing whoever was on the radio and complaining at Daniel and looked out the windshield at John. He waved him inside, so John started for his door as Daniel got out to climb into the back again. There was momentary confusion when Jack climbed out of the helicopter again and went to retrieve the ordnance sitting on the snow in its unexploded state. John stood in the door and watched across the seat as Jack carried the missile over and handed it up to Daniel, the doc looking about like he had been handed a three-day-dead fish.</p><p>“Excuse- I’m sorry, sir, did you just-” John got a little flustered staring at the presumably deadly explosive device that had just been placed in his helicopter.</p><p>“They said it’s safe,” replied Jack. “Just don’t crash on the way and we’ll be fine.”</p><p>John frowned at the man distrustfully from behind his sunglasses and reluctantly followed orders. He was somewhat surprised, fifteen minutes later, when they touched down again and the General ordered him to cut the engines and prepare to stay awhile. At that, there were no more side-eye glances at the mystery ordnance because whatever the thing was, it had just successfully earned John access to the Top Secret Ice Base and the weird day had just gotten pretty damn cool. John just hoped it was worth it; he had spent a lot of time wondering about the base and would be very disappointed if it didn’t live up to the one in his imagination. John let his passengers handle the squid-drone and remembered to grab McKay’s thermos before he followed them to the elevator.</p><p>Just to be helpful, John offered one last chance to send him home before the doors closed. “I don’t have clearance, sir-”</p><p>“Anybody who can out-fly one of these telepathic bastards is gonna <em>get </em>clearance,” replied O’Neill, motioning to the ordnance he carried.</p><p>“Understood,” said John, smiling from sheer surprise. He watched the different colors of ice rumble by as the elevator rattled further into the ground and tried to remind himself that he wasn’t a stupid kid and to keep his eyes in his head.</p><p>“We’ve got to take care of this first,” O’Neill said as the doors opened on their destination. He stepped out and Daniel quickly started to lead the way somewhere. Jack waved for John to wait. “You… just don’t touch anything.”</p><p>“Yessir,” said Sheppard. And for the most part, John managed to keep his hands to himself. There were more of the squid-missiles set up on a couple of tables and John kept his distance. People bustled around in between, some in uniforms of some kind under their winter gear, everyone with tablets or clipboards, talking business with whoever they were walking with or seated by. John and his borrowed Thermos tried to look like he knew what he was doing by going off in search of the one face he knew belonging to the group; McKay was generally loud and shouldn’t be <em>too </em>hard to find.</p><p>“Major Sheppard?” someone asked. John turned to find one of his more recent passengers walking toward him, looking quite confused and concerned.</p><p>“Hey! Doc Beckett,” John greeted mildly, offering a lazy tip of the hat with the Thermos. Dr. Beckett had been a chatty passenger and now the man was bound to have more interesting stories than he started out with, so John sat back and let him run with whatever was on his tongue to tell him. The man was in the middle of talking about the most recent techno gadget John had delivered for him just the week earlier and the fascinating capacity it offered for his work on replicating particular genetic strains before he thought to ask if John had clearance to be “in the city.”</p><p>“Yeah, General O’Neill just gave it to me,” John replied with a shrug. It was anybody’s guess exactly how far that clearance went, but John was being very careful not to ask any questions. So Carson carried on with his wandering tour of the underground base. John kept the Thermos in his hands and effectively followed the orders not to touch anything even as Carson rambled into the states-secrets territory without seeming to realize (or care) a few times.</p><p>“And this is the cause of all the trouble this mornin’ with that wee bastard drone,” Carson said as they came upon a room with a big throne-like chair on a dais in the middle of it. “This chair apparently controls ‘em, but of course nobody bloody told me that before they put me in it, did they now?”</p><p>John followed him in, a flare of frustrated anger escaping at the revelation. “That attack was your fault?”</p><p>Carson held up his hands in genuine innocence. “I didnae mean any harm, had no idea what would happen! No one did, really. We were trying to conduct a bit of research and....It was an accident. I’m so sorry…”</p><p>The man couldn’t have been more sincere about it and John felt bad for growling at him almost instantly.</p><p>“Fine. But don’t do it again,” he said, trying to roll his way out of accidentally bullying someone older and smarter than him. Still, the chair caught his attention. It was rather loudly calling his name in his imagination; some kind of alien throne, like aliens had kings and royalty, and it could shoot squid-missiles… This entire place couldn’t be real. Carson went on rambling about genetics and magic components that only responded to certain genes. John felt a little disconnected as he set the Thermos down on the floor beside the chair and opted to try it out.</p><p>“Erm, Major, I don’t think that’s such a great idea…” Carson began but Sheppard just dismissed it.</p><p>“Come on, Doc. What are the odds I’ve actually got this genetic keycode as these guys-” John’s voice trailed off as the chair around him lit up blue and the footrest kicked up like a dentist’s chair. <em>Oh shit.</em></p><p>“Quite slim, actually,” said Carson, quietly shocked by what he was seeing. He waved for John’s attention. “Stay here. Do not move.”</p><p>And then he was off and yelling for a Dr. Weir and Dr. McKay, the sound of flapping papers indicating he had likely run into someone on his way out into the halls.</p><p>The chair felt buzzy, like pins and needles connected John to the weird gel pads on the arms and under his hands. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he almost thought he heard whispering. He looked around without moving his head, taking the doctor’s orders at face value because somehow or another the chair had released missiles already that morning. John didn’t want to find out what else it could screw up if he did something else he wasn’t supposed to.</p><p>Come to think on it, leaving him in the chair unsupervised seemed like a really bad idea on Carson’s part. <em>Yeah, like the Air Force was going to let John blame breaking a chair on a civilian doc</em>. John had trapped himself pretty good that time and was solidly afraid to move.</p><p>Of course, General O’Neill returned with Carson and McKay. There were other people, Daniel and a few techy-types and a dark haired woman John probably had flown before, but John was a bit distracted trying not to let any squid-missiles loose from the chair.</p><p>“I <em>know </em>I told you not to touch anything,” O’Neill barked at him. John tried not to shrug as that counted as moving.</p><p>“I just sat down,” he said as a lame defense.</p><p>“Who is this?” the woman asked.</p><p>“Dr. Weir, this is Major John Sheppard. Excellent pilot, and I’m thinking he’s about to become your problem,” replied O’Neill. John blinked.</p><p>“Well, the chair seems to like him,” said Dr. Weir.</p><p>“Sir? This chair launches <em>missiles…</em>” began John. “This is just a guess but I don’t think we want the chair to <em>like </em>me.”</p><p>“Don’t you dare try it,” replied O’Neill. “I specifically told you not to touch <em>anything</em>.”</p><p>“Rodney, perhaps you can help here,” said Dr. Weir as she looked back at McKay. The man looked disgruntled in his fluffy orange pullover jacket and he stood behind her a few steps, like he had to debate if he wanted to help. He finally stepped forward, speaking with his hands like he always did.</p><p>“Major, I need you to picture where we are in the universe,” he said. John frowned at him, because that was exactly the oddest question anyone could have asked him while he was sitting in a chair that could shoot <em>telepathic </em>ordnance. But as thoughts tended to work, he was vaguely aware of thoughts wandering to the location of the planets and sky phenomena in general. Suddenly the ceiling over him lit up in a fully detailed map of the Milky Way. There were reference points on the colorful three-dimensional display that John didn’t even know what they were, but they at least seemed familiar as the right galaxy.</p><p>“Did I do that?” he asked, feeling dumb even as the words left his mouth. The map overhead moved and realigned and narrowed in on places as he considered them, giving him very direct cause-and-effect reference points to choose from to know that, yes, in fact, he had done that. “Crap.”</p><p>“General O’Neill, would it be possible for us to borrow the Major for a few days?” asked Dr. Weir. “I think Drs. Beckett and McKay will need his assistance with this."</p><p>"Wow. Okay. Major, try to narrow down on our location here," said McKay at the same time, stepping closer, but not onto the dais, to walk him through the connection to the chair. The display over their heads zoomed to their location and John wanted to know what the base looked like under the ice. A layer by layer schematic appeared, showing the full size of the underground base and suddenly they were staring at multiple buildings under the ice, not just the tunnels John had thought they were.</p><p>"How the hell are we supposed to power something<em> that</em> size?" McKay blurted. John wanted to know the same thing and suddenly the view overhead was showing them and McKay started swearing and scrambling for a tablet. John lost all track of the conversation between Dr. Weir and General O'Neill as they volunteered him for reassignment because he had sat in a chair.</p><p>A half an hour later, John could hardly see straight and his brain was foggy. Sitting in the chair was just as addicting as flying, but his brain could only handle so much at a time; Carson had pulled him bodily from it when he got a nose bleed from the strain. So he sat in the doc's lair with a blanket and a cup of tea so he was warm and listened to Carson and Rodney argue about acceptable limits of human experimentation.</p><p>As the human being experimented on, John had a marked interest in the outcome, but tracking their conversation was a little more work than he was willing to do just then. He was US Air Force, while Beckett was Scotts and McKay was Canadian. Anything they wanted to do, John was pretty sure he could get out of, if he had to, just by calling the Brass. Maybe OSHA. Either way, he wasn't worried. He was used to medically required pokes and prodding and didn’t complain when Beckett drew blood; it probably went along with the bleeding-out-the-nose thing from the chair anyway.</p><p>“But with enough practice and focus, he could get us to the zed-PM, Carson. He has to be in that chair,” Rodney rambled on.</p><p>“Aye, and over time it’s a possibility, but I know your kind, Rodney. Ye won’t have him in that chair the next twenty-four hours, or however long it takes, just for the recipe to the magic gizmos,” said Dr. Beckett.</p><p>“Of course not, did you see the power fluctuation reports from the chair while he was in it? We’d lose our heaters. No, I’m merely suggesting something much more manageable. Much more within the capacity of our generators keeping up. No more than six hours, tops…”</p><p>“Twenty minutes, per day. That’s max, Dr. McKay. No more <em>than</em>,” said Carson, which John greatly appreciated. “After a half an hour his brain can’t handle it. That’s not to happen again.”</p><p>“I’m sure he’s healthy, he’ll get used to it, it’ll be fine,” Rodney insisted. John blinked at the man, remembering very clearly Daniel’s disbelief at the suggestion that McKay had done something as a kindness. It suddenly made sense. Rodney seemed to remember John was in the room then and looked to him. “Come on. You’re not afraid of the chair, right? I just need someone who can use the damn thing who’s not afraid of the chair.”</p><p>“I’m not afraid of the chair,” John replied, nodding his agreement. “But I happen to like my blood on the inside of my body where it belongs. So if the doc says it caps out at twenty minutes, I’m okay with that, too.”</p><p>“Well, yes, the blood on the inside is the preferred state, but the Ancients used these things. It’s their defense system. It can’t be a permanent thing, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to use them,” Rodney replied. John raised an eyebrow at him.</p><p>“Dr. McKay, I’m thirty three. That’s not ancient,” he pointed out.</p><p>“Oh. Huh. thirty two here. You aged better,” Rodney said, motioning vaguely toward himself. It was a random observation and John spluttered on an unexpected laugh as Rodney carried on, unawares apparently that he’d made it out loud. He waved toward the screen scrolling weird patterns off behind Carson’s head. “Ancients, of course, referring to the Lanteans who created this place, these toys, that chair. Which we need to get you back into so we can learn more about them. And how this place works. I remind you both this is a global defense station, ergo the information we need R-E global defense is locked in that chair…”</p><p>John’s amusement faded and he scrunched his nose. <em>Global defense</em> was certainly one way to guilt him out of being worried about nosebleeds. “<em>Global</em> defense?”</p><p>“Yes. Global. Defense. As in the last line of it against aliens. Of the kind that like to blow things up and put snakes in people’s spines and turn everyone into zombie-slaves…” Rodney trailed off as he noticed that Carson’s jaw had dropped and John was looking at him rather bug-eyed. He flailed his arms as he realized he had moved well past either of their current knowledge base. “Oh come on! Does nobody know anything around here?”</p><p>“Clearances, Rodney…” Carson said, sounding rather horrified.</p><p>“I’m new,” John reminded him, offering Carson the out. “Snake-aliens is very, very new.”</p><p>“No, really, they aren’t. The SGC has been dealing with them for the past, oh, I’d say just under ten years, give or take,” replied Rodney. John stared at him.</p><p>“You’re telling me while I was graduating college these guys were meeting snake-aliens?” he asked.</p><p>“Yes, well, General O’Neill’s team has been very busy. Everything’s really only taken off in the last five years since Dr. Carter joined…”</p><p>“Snake-aliens? There’s snake-aliens?” John repeated, trying to get the man to focus on the part he wanted to know more about. He jabbed a finger at the desk next to him. “This <em>place</em>... came from snake-aliens?”</p><p>“Oh my god-” Rodney moved over and sat down next to him, dropping his tablet onto the desk and working a few screens before he put it in front of John. “Read that then. We don’t have access to everything the SGC has, but there’s Dr. Jackson’s report. Aliens who rely on immortal symbiotes to control humans. They’re not actually snakes. You sound like an idiot.”</p><p>And John read over the archived report and its attached classified documents, including images, and very carefully didn’t ask any questions because he wasn’t sure exactly how much clearance he had. McKay read over his shoulder and chimed in with random helpful bits of information, which he had gleaned from his work with Dr. Carter, and made many, <em>many </em>comments about the fact that John was a slower reader than he would have thought. John narrowed his eyes at him for it but he got used to the observations the same as any other hazing. It was easier to ignore from McKay because the guy was a science nerd and John could kick his ass, as opposed to half the guys he had spent the last ten years getting called out by, and for things that weren’t as nerdy as reading too slow.</p><p>Slow reader or not, John got caught up on enough to break his brain, very quickly. There was a lot of information to process. A lot of science fiction stuffed up in his brain had to be recategorized into science fact. And a lot of science fact had to get bent around a little, too, because suddenly he was staring down the barrel of wormhole technology that Rodney McKay was happy to report he was one of the world’s foremost experts on and of course that was why they needed John back in the chair so that he could find out where there were more of these ZPM things that could power the wormholes and power the chair and power the defenses against the snake-aliens. It all folded together nicely but at the same time… not. John couldn’t quite wrap his head around it. He tapped the tablet screen with a finger and looked up at Rodney.</p><p>“This is real? It’s <em>really… </em>real?”</p><p>“Are you kidding?” Rodney blurted. “You just sat in a chair that made your nose bleed because it was hacking your brain and broadcasting it into 3D space above your head and you’re asking if it’s real?”</p><p>John frowned at him. Well, when he put it <em>that </em>way…</p><p>“Yes, it’s real! I’ll go put you back in the chair and prove it,” Rodney offered, flustered at the sheer idiocy of John’s question. John scratched at the back of his neck as he considered it, frowning at the tablet. Then he nodded.</p><p>“Okay. Yeah. Chair,” he said. Rodney blinked at him.</p><p>“Wait, really?” he asked. John nodded again as he stood up, finished off now-cold tea. Rodney was up like a shot and collected the tablet. “‘Kay, bye Carson. Chair calls.”</p><p>“It does <em>what </em>now?” the doc asked from across the room. Rodney clamped on to John’s elbow like he expected a tug-o-war with the medical doctor and still backed them toward the door.</p><p>“He’s going back in the chair,” Rodney said. “His idea. All good.”</p><p>“Twenty minutes, promise,” John added. “Maybe… somebody find a timer?”</p><p>John stumbled along with Rodney as Carson walked out after them, obviously not enthusiastic about the idea.</p><p>“Dr. McKay?” a woman’s voice asked, further up the hallway, and John looked back to see Dr. Weir peeking out of another doorway. General O’Neill showed up then, too, and John came to a respectful stop at spotting the officer in the hall. Rodney sighed and let loose of his arm.</p><p>“We were going to put the Major back in the chair, try to narrow in on the zed-pms again,” he reported, as if he spoke quickly then they wouldn’t argue with him.</p><p>“I don’t think that’s such a great idea,” said Dr. Weir. She looked to Carson. “It’s hardly been an hour. Did you clear this?”</p><p>“I certainly did not,” said Carson. Dr. Weir frowned over at Rodney for that.</p><p>“Major, if you’re back on your feet, perhaps I should fill you in on our mission here before Dr. McKay attempts to put you in the infirmary again?” Weir suggested. Rodney frowned right back at her.</p><p>“Carson only had problems that <em>once</em>, he’s been absolutely fine since,” Rodney insisted. “There’s just a… warming up period. They get used to it. Except for Carson, as he's afraid of it.”</p><p>“Major, accompany Dr. Weir. Ignore McKay,” said General O’Neill. Rodney straightened up and tucked his tablet in against his side at what passed for the scientist’s version of at-attention. John clapped him on the shoulder and headed back for Dr. Weir and the General. If O’Neill said the whole global defense thing could wait, John would listen to the General’s orders.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The young Major Sheppard dropped into the chair across from what passed as Elizabeth’s desk and waited politely as she collected her computer.</p><p>"So you want back in the chair already?" Elizabeth asked as she settled in. "Against medical advice, no less."</p><p>Major Sheppard smiled and shrugged. He seemed to have trouble with the boring folding chair, sitting half sideways and slouched without being rude. Very comfortable with the sparse offerings of their underground outpost.</p><p>"McKay made some good points," John replied. "It seemed worth giving a shot."</p><p>"You are one of the few people I've met who would willingly go along with one of Rodney's <em>good points</em> on the first day," said Elizabeth, amused. "Safe to assume you two get along okay? You would obviously be working with him, and you've now seen how he gets."</p><p>"A little pushy, maybe, but he's alright," the pilot said. "The whole <em>global defense</em> focus seems like one I can get behind."</p><p>"That is <em>one </em>of our objectives with this outpost, yes," Elizabeth said. She hesitated and folded her arms over the desk. "So it sounds like Rodney already gave you the sales pitch."</p><p>"His version of it, anyway. Stop the snake-aliens, save the planet, find more zeep-thingys to keep everything powered up and ready to fight. And that chair takes care of three out of three if we can figure out how to make it make sense," said John. He seemed to have the spirit of it, even if the details were a bit lacking. Overall, though, it wasn't terrible for the few hours the man had been on base to catch up.</p><p>"As you saw, this is a small city. The goal is to make it habitable, bring it online and functional as defense support for the planet, yes. And follow the secrets it may uncover for us regarding the civilization that built it, from discovering how the rest of their technology works, to replicating as much of it as we can, maybe even finding them. Including the ZPMs, which are the power source for that chair, and many other things, if we can harness it. This outpost, Terra Atlantus, as it was called by those who built it, presents great opportunity for mankind, not simply an effective defense solution," Elizabeth clarified. "And it would seem that you may have the genetic key that few others have that help us to unlock it. So far, that list includes exactly three people. General O'Neill, Dr. Beckett, and yourself. We are hoping the doctor can find more as he looks into it, but for now, that's everybody. Part of the work you would do here would be toward helping Dr. Beckett narrow down the genetics."</p><p>"What, like a lab rat?"</p><p>"Not hardly. So far he's been asking volunteers for nothing more than saliva swabs and blood samples. The lab side will be more Dr. McKay, I expect. He is constantly asking Carson to activate some piece of technology or another so that he can try to work on it. That would fall to you, I imagine. It would put you at the beck and call of the science team. You would have to get along well with the geeks, Major, as we have a lot of them down here." </p><p>"Well, don't let it get around, but that shouldn't be hard. I was a math major, too," said Sheppard. Elizabeth liked the sound of that and turned her attention to the computer tablet. O'Neill had made phone calls and someone at the SGC was supposed to be getting Major Sheppard's file from the Air Force. She was just waiting for the email copy.</p><p>"In that case, I would recommend you be careful then out here. You might find yourself speaking their language," she replied with a smile. </p><p>The email had arrived and Elizabeth began skimming through it. It didn't take long to discover why a pilot who had caught General O'Neill's attention had been banished to the snow. Disobeying orders wouldn't be as much of a problem for the expedition, however, as the life or death issues they dealt with were much more immediate than anything a chain of command could turn into a profit-loss scenario. It was almost a vote in his favor. </p><p>There was a note in his file from former VP Kinsey, but Elizabeth had been around politicians long enough to recognize it for ham-handed PR concerns. The note that held more weight was from Senator Valley, who had been active Air Force and was, like a few others with letters attached to the personnel file, looking out for the airman who had tried to do the right thing in an impossible situation. Everything said he would be a good fit for the project, even if they had no position for him beyond "the guy who could work the chair."</p><p>The Major caught on that she was reading and waited patiently rather than assume he had been dismissed, so Elizabeth kept at it. She got to his vital records page and mentally tripped, however. She looked up at the dark haired young man and seemed to freeze.</p><p>"I'm sorry, this says your father is Patrick Sheppard?" she clarified. John nodded as though he was used to the question.</p><p>"Yes, ma'am. His company does RDI work for the military. My grandfather was General Richard Sheppard," he reported. The young man was probably used to the legal disclaimers, avoiding snafus with some kind of appearance of favoritism with his position, but Elizabeth felt something close to panic. She looked back to the file and stared right at the birthdate recorded on the page.</p><p>There was noise at the door then and it opened to let Rodney in. Elizabeth kept her head down, supported by an elbow on the desk as she tried to process the information staring her boldly in the face.</p><p>"Elizabeth, can I-" he went quiet as she waved him off. The scientist looked from the Director to the clueless pilot in the chair in front of her. "What's happened? Elizabeth? Dr. Weir?"</p><p>"I'm fine. <em>Not</em> now, Rodney," Elizabeth said, perhaps sharper than she intended.</p><p>"Wait, <em>Elizabeth</em> Weir?" John asked. The pilot seemed to gradually remember how to sit in a chair. He leaned forward, strangely pale, and tried to get her to look at him. Elizabeth wasn't sure if she could suddenly.</p><p>"You wouldn't happen to have gone by <em>Bethy</em>, at any point?" John asked. "Like, on paper?"</p><p>Elizabeth did look up then because she needed to figure out if John understood, if they had just asked the same question in two different ways. That… would be disastrous for so many reasons. She saw surprise on the young man's face, but also anger. That seemed as clear an indication as any.</p><p>This wasn't anything Elizabeth had ever trained for, watching her personal life and childhood collide with her professional life as an adult, but she was in the damned position of needing to handle business, including matters of national security, rather than have a personal crisis. She straightened in her seat, allowed the desk to offer support, and reminded herself how to breathe. She coughed to keep it out of her voice.</p><p>"I did, yes. For a short time. When I was fifteen," she said. She looked up to Rodney then. "What did you need?"</p><p>The scientist looked between the two of them, absolutely baffled. "What just happened?"</p><p>"Not important," said John. Elizabeth certainly didn't know the man well, but it sounded like he had just lied. And she had every intention to back him up on it.</p><p>"We were discussing whether or not Major Sheppard would be joining the expedition, Rodney. Can we get back to our conversation, or did you need something?" she asked. It was a blatant appeal to the man's selfish nature and she wasn't surprised to watch it completely derail him. He looked to John and thumbed back over his shoulder before looking to Elizabeth.</p><p>"Does that mean we can go work with the chair?" he asked, like a kid who had just been promised the keys to the candy store. Elizabeth watched as John leaned forward and clasped his hands, studied the floor as he kept to himself. She looked back up at Rodney.</p><p>"That's still up in the air," she replied. "Can I help you with something?"</p><p>Rodney stared at her, blank faced, then down at his tablet and back up. "I don't remember now. I'll… just go back to work and… come back when it hits me."</p><p>"Wonderful idea, Rodney," said Elizabeth, more miserable sarcasm than enthusiasm. And the scientist disappeared. The doors slid closed again behind him. And Elizabeth was left to deal with a full grown adult version of the tiny newborn she had adopted out over thirty years ago. She didn't know what to do then and she sure as hell didn't know what to do now.</p><p>"Wow," said John, once the silence had just started to settle in. "This… this takes the cake. Today is unreal."</p><p>Elizabeth tried to smile at the observation but she didn't feel it quite made it there. "On the contrary, this is possibly the most real day I've had in months," she realized. "I think maybe negotiating with aliens was easier than knowing what to say just now."</p><p>John still stared at the floor and he shook his head. He shrugged it off. "Nothing needs to be said," he decided. He looked up at her then. "So what? You know my dad's name. I happen to know yours. It's a big damn planet."</p><p>"It does get small from time to time," Elizabeth replied. </p><p>"Not <em>that</em> small," John replied. He nodded toward the tablet she had been reading from. "If you keep reading, you'll see my mother's name was Leila Sheppard. And she died about ten years ago. I sure as hell don't need anyone trying to sign up for her job now. So if that's what this conversation is about, I'm late reporting back to McMurdo."</p><p>The hard tone wasn't expected, not that Elizabeth had much of an idea of what she had stumbled into with the pilot in the first place, and Elizabeth blinked at him, speechless. She tried to catch up and gradually managed a nod. She took a breath and dropped back on her experience with politics and teaching to scrounge up a mild smile.</p><p>"I think if that's what this conversation was about, Drs. McKay and Jackson would personally steal a weapon and shoot me for interference with their work here," she said, trying for at least a shade of humor. "I believe the conversation was about whether or not you were capable of joining the science team. To assist with our research on the technology of this outpost, potentially further if the expedition becomes viable."</p><p>The fact that it meant she would have to deal with seeing the young man every day, knowing what she now knew, was secondary to the priority of the mission. They could save lives with this base, with John Sheppard to help unlock it, or maybe even the planet. For that, Elizabeth could stay focused. And for that, if it became a problem, she could rearrange a lot of how the outpost operated in order to minimize the impact. This was a prime example of why there needed to be a psychologist on the base and at hand, so the Director's first order of business when the Major left her office was going to be to request one. In the meantime, Elizabeth had to make it through a few more minutes without a breakdown she suddenly realized was long overdue, and had to hope the young man didn't notice. If he did, he certainly didn't care.</p><p>"I'll go where my orders send me," John replied. He looked back at the ground and worked his hands nervously, cleared his throat. "And until those orders come in, I should get back to my base. I, uh. I'm not going near that chair for a few hours."</p><p>Elizabeth nodded. "I appreciate your candor on the matter. I'll try to reign in Rodney-"</p><p>"I can handle McKay, I just need a few hours," cut in John, a little snappish. Elizabeth nodded. John seemed to hesitate, adjusted his attitude, and glanced up at her.  "Maybe… keep the General off my back."</p><p>"I will try, Major. I'll tell him you'll be back in the morning, weather allowing," she replied. That seemed an acceptable answer and John took it as the dismissal it was. He stood up to leave just as the door opened again.</p><p>"Dr. Weir, that thing I needed to know, sorry, just remembered- no one can translate this, and it's either saying we <em>can</em> remove the transponder or-" McKay quieted as he looked up to realize he had nearly run into Major Sheppard, nose to nose. He looked quickly from one to the other. "Oh good. All done?"</p><p>Sheppard hesitated, glanced at Elizabeth briefly, before shaking his head. "I've gotta get back to base. My base. I mean. I'll be back in the morning. Weather allowing."</p><p>That was almost amusing after the young man's assertion that he could handle Rodney but Elizabeth kept it to herself. McKay seemed to deflate a little but nodded and stepped aside. Sheppard was out the door with hardly another word and Rodney actually caught on that Elizabeth wasn't feeling overly chatty herself. He handed her the tablet for her to help with the translation, however. It took the two of them fifteen minutes to sort out, and by then, Elizabeth had O'Neill and Jackson both in her office wanting to know where their pilot was. She frowned at them in open confusion.</p><p>"I had it on the schedule that you were here for three days, General," she said.</p><p>"Well, yes, but that's beside the point," replied Daniel. "Major Sheppard was going to be reassigned to Terra Atlantus-"</p><p>"And he still may be. That's up to the Air Force, isn't it?" Elizabeth reminded him. She grabbed her cold coffee from the desk, realized her hands were not reliable just then, and set it right back down. She tried to center and start over. Again. She looked up at Daniel, because part of her was trying to toss up a mental and visual block on the existence of Jack O'Neill and Elizabeth couldn't feed that part. "Major Sheppard seemed to have some conflicts that he needed to take care of, so I told him to check back in the morning."</p><p>"But we need him here," said McKay and Elizabeth studied her desk rather than glare at any of the men pressuring her just then. She settled her nerves enough and looked between them to be sure she was understood.</p><p>"If the Air Force wants to lock him into the assignment, that's the jurisdiction of their charter, but I won't. The chair and other things we need him for are not skills bestowed by his work for the military. They are a chance of genetics, and I won't set the precedence that this expedition mandates what people choose to do, or not do, with their bodies simply because we work with alien technology that can read DNA."</p><p>As the only one present who would be at all impacted by such a stance, Jack was the first to nod his acceptance of it. "That's fair," he said, successfully silencing any protests from Daniel or Rodney. "And the guy will be back in the morning. You can sound him out then."</p><p>"Maybe Carson will know more then, too," added Rodney. "Snowball's chance in hell, but… maybe."</p><p>"If there's nothing else, I'd like to get back to work now, gentlemen," Elizabeth said. And there wasn't, thankfully, so they scattered to their corners. </p><p>Elizabeth, however, snuck out of her office and to her frigid quarters to lose her breakfast to suddenly rebelling nerves and stress. She spent the rest of the day under a mountain of blankets, alternating between numb and crying, and wishing the temperature wasn't in the negatives on this assignment. She could have sat on a couch with a carton of ice cream and a bottle of wine, for hours, until she could forget what had so casually rose up from her childhood to kick her in the gut and completely level her, if it weren't so damn cold buried under the ice in the Antarctic.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Sitting down in that alien chair would probably have gotten somebody killed; John didn't have the best grasp on his attitude, and a chair that could read his mind would only broadcast that. If a doctor afraid of the chair could launch a drone missile, a man suddenly stuck digging through twenty years of memories as a scared kid was bound to be a disaster. The logical part of his brain that had figured out the chair wasn't going to let John near it until he could get straight. It was no different than dealing with the horses back home; pull up the wrong horse, in the wrong mood, and the animal would take advantage and either put the rider or himself in the ground. A helicopter didn't have that problem. </p><p>John tried not to notice the fact that the few base doors between him and the elevator up to the surface all seemed to open before he got to them. They hadn't been motion-sensor activated before. But they got out of his way and nobody gave him any crap. He stopped on his way by the room with the chair, standing in the door a moment, arms crossed as he considered it. Leaving wasn't running away, it was just smart. He was angry and angry humans belonged nowhere near weapons of mass destruction.</p><p>John didn't think he would be done being angry by the morning though.</p><p>He spotted the Thermos on the floor by the side of the chair, where he had left it. It still had coffee in it. He still had to fly home. And he could pretend the coffee was spiked and maybe convince himself to relax on the flight home. Mind made up, John stole the borrowed Thermos back and headed out, managing not to get lost before finding the elevator. </p><p>The flight back to McMurdo didn't make him feel any better. He was still stuck in his head about what he had learned in the office. Weir's office. Elizabeth Weir had an office. It didn't have the big fancy executive desk with the blotter and the stylized monitor like his Dad's offices always had. It was a wood folding chair that wouldn't freeze in the cold, and a wood folding table, with a space heater under it and a laptop station plugged into an extension cord. They couldn't get more opposite.</p><p>John didn't have high enough clearance to dig around in the computers and snoop on Elizabeth Weir as easily as she could pull up his entire personnel file. With what went on out at the Ice Base, the second John typed her name somewhere, flags would pop up and get him fired. And John couldn't say he was that mad. Not yet. Not enough to give up flying. But he didn't like that she was there, he didn't like that he had flown her out there to start with, and he didn't like that she had his entire record and he knew nothing about her. Nothing at all.</p><p>So - after kicking a few trash cans out in the snow and unsuccessfully burning off energy with the weight bag in the gym - he caved and took over the little closet-space that was reserved for tying up the base's outgoing phone line and called his dad. </p><p>"John? Are you alright?" Patrick asked. He started every conversation like that now, just because they didn't happen often. John could count on one hand the number of times he had talked to Patrick on the phone since making it out of Afghanistan. He had seen him twice, once in the hospital and then at Christmas, and that was how they worked. Patrick was still the guy who had adopted him, even if they didn't get along all that great, and family was whatever John could make of it. What he had wasn't what he wanted, but it was all he figured he'd get.</p><p>"No, I'm not," John said, the words ground out before he could think up a workable lie. </p><p>"Where-"</p><p>"I'm at work. I'm fine," he said, trying to salvage what he could of the bad idea. "I just- need to know about my mom. The- the real one. The one from the birth certificate."</p><p>Patrick didn't have anything at all to say to that for what felt like an hour.  </p><p>"At work?" he finally asked.</p><p>"Yes, I'm at work. And we have limited phone time, here. I think my card has twenty minutes left on it, so help me out," John replied.</p><p>"Fine. What do you want to know?"</p><p>John glared at the ceiling because the cosmos weren't helping him with the stupid questions. "Who she goddamn<em> is."</em></p><p>"What the hell is going on, John?"</p><p>"I think I just <em>met</em> her and I need to know, okay? I'm on the ass-end of the planet and can't do <em>anything</em>. Help-" John broke off to stare at the phone cradle. How pathetic was he, anyway, calling his adopted dad for help, a full grown adult who was afraid of a tiny doctor in a half-buried igloo, a hundred miles away. He was afraid of her. "Shit."</p><p>"Okay… hang on, John. I'll see what I can find, alright?" his dad said. He didn't sound like himself, at least not the version John was used to getting. He was used to the CEO who didn't have time, who was too busy and annoyed. The guy offering to help over the phone line actually gave a damn. So John nodded into the handset and waited, silent.</p><p>What he ended up with was a report off a few public records searches and over a dozen news articles, because his dad had access to the internet and a few servers he wasn't supposed to play in, thanks to his RDI contracts with the government. Patrick didn't find anything that would get him in trouble, but he found a helluva lot more than John could have on public dial-up, on a monitored computer, a thousand miles from civilization. And he managed to do it before John ran out of minutes on his phone card. </p><p>"I'm about out of time, Dad-"</p><p>"I'll send out a new card," Patrick offered.</p><p>"No, I'm being reassigned. I think. It won't get here. Don't worry about it."</p><p>"Where this time?"</p><p>"Weir's jurisdiction," was all John could say there, and even that he probably wasn't supposed to. </p><p>"Shit," said Patrick. "Look, John, it's- I mean, this person obviously has a head on her shoulders. She's accomplished a lot, really. She could be a good person to get to know. Hell, if you want a career in politics-"</p><p>"I don't. Never have. That's why it's bullshit that Afghanistan put me on everybody's radar. I'm not a black mark who can't follow orders, not trying to climb on a family name. I just want to fly," John said. He didn't need this complication. "It's not even my name."</p><p>"John, you're thirty three years old. Everything you've done, god knows you didn't ask my help for it.  You've had your name the whole time. It is yours," Patrick pointed out. "You don't know this person. You don't <em>belong</em> to anyone. Except yourself. Whatever this is, this thing today, doesn't change things. That name is still yours. Understand?"</p><p>John gave a reluctant nod. "Yeah."</p><p>He didn't have a lot of luck convincing himself of that later, all but hiding in his bunk trying to figure it out. His name felt like it belonged to him. Right up until he reminded himself that it was his aunt's husband's name, and John didn't even remember her aside from a few pictures in a photo album. And that his mom was slated to be his new boss, and <em>that</em> was the name he should have grown up with. Except he hadn't. He had been left behind at some hospital to get picked up and shipped off.</p><p>And without the extra weight of a newborn, Elizabeth Weir went on to be a PhD, a linguist, a negotiator, saving the world with UN treaties, and from what John had seen that morning, maybe even from aliens. It seemed a good enough pay off for leaving a baby to be somebody else's problem. The problem was that she had left <em>him</em>. And that… wasn't something John could wrap his head around just then.</p><p>He was a full grown adult and he felt like he was ten years old all over again. </p><p>His CO showed up around nineteen hundred hours with the reassignment orders.</p><p>"What the hell did you do?" the man wanted to know. "I sent you out to play taxi, for christsakes."</p><p>John shook his head. "Not sure I'm at liberty to say, sir."</p><p>That cut off the friendly prying quick enough and John was left to pack his gear. Weather allowing, he would be back at the Ice Base after breakfast. Somebody else would have to play taxi; John wouldn't get to keep the choppers on the new assignment. He figured that stupid chair had better be worth losing the flight time or he would raise holy hell and have a pretty impressive arsenal to play with.</p><p>The next morning the Thermos was staring John in the face on the desk beside his bunk when his alarm went off. He had set it there on purpose. He had to return the damn thing, even if he got to the Ice Base and flamed out like he wanted to. He had to at least show up and the Thermos would get him that far. John would check in with his annoying, pain in the ass, ten-year-old self when he got there and see if he could make it a whole day around his new boss this time. </p><p>His pilot for the trip, an old guy named Ballard, wasn’t sympathetic to John’s appeals that he wasn’t going to get to fly again for a while and John was stuck with shotgun on the flight back to the Ice Base. But he got him there, no detours, no letting him chicken out. So the assignment was definitely gonna happen. John had gone from a pilot with a black mark on the books to a chair jockey working for his <em>mom</em> at the snow-bound, ass-end of the world. It was enough to make a man cranky. </p><p>Rodney met him at the elevator, like the idiot had been waiting for him. John shut off whatever the man was about to hit him with by putting the Thermos in his hand. </p><p>“That’s yours. Thanks for the assist,” he said. Rodney looked at it, confused by the tape. He turned it around in his hands until the tape was hidden and then seemed to recognize it and finally nodded.</p><p>“Huh. That’s where that went,” he muttered. Then he shook it off and looked back up to John. “Okay, so, you’re back. Chair?”</p><p>John rolled his eyes. “Sure, after I stow my gear, and figure out who the hell I’m reporting to. My transfer orders were a little vague on that.”</p><p>The fact was that his transfer orders didn’t even have his title on them, and the glaring hole where it should have said “pilot” burned at his already bad attitude about the place. He had been officially relocated, got a temporary reclassification to a TS/SCI information clearance, and even a raise for the trouble, but he wasn’t listed as a pilot anymore. His family business was going to get another fine-tooth-comb audit job because the new level of background checks had been ordered and John had to sign off on his part, but there was no trouble there; his dad and his little brother had a higher clearance level as civilians working for a research and development company than John ever had as a pilot. Now whatever he was, it was classified so hard <em>he</em> didn’t even know what it was. </p><p>John had many questions. Rodney wasn’t likely to be the guy with those answers.</p><p>He did offer to get him back to Weir’s office, though, so John took him up on it. And they walked by the alcove room with the chair. And again John had the little buzzing, nagging, <em>something </em>in his head demanding his attention from the chair. </p><p>“Hold up,” he said to McKay, and the scientist stopped. He saw where John’s attention went.</p><p>“You said that had to wait,” he said, smug sarcasm right there on his face. It was a challenge. And John took it. He started shrugging out of his pack.</p><p>“Yeah, well, I’m over it,” Sheppard replied. McKay was suddenly the helpful butler, ushering him into the room and helping him out of his gear. “Twenty minutes.”</p><p>“I told you, that’s just Carson being paranoid. It’ll be fine,” Rodney replied. He dropped a clipboard and some paperwork on John’s pack and focused on the tablet he also carried, blindly following John to the dias and the chair. “Okay, so I have some ideas on what to look for here. I mean, focus, you’ve got to focus. We’re just gonna try it.”</p><p>“Go,” said John, settling into the chair. Rodney glanced up at him as everything lit up but kept his attention on the screen another moment. Then he looked up at John.</p><p>“Power source. We need the ZPMs that run this place. They look like this,” he held up the tablet so John could see the image of a pixelated-looking crystal. “We need locations. Gate addresses.”</p><p>“What the hell is a gate address.” muttered John. But he was already staring at a bright, full-color 3D projection of the galaxy over his head. It spun and sliced and jumped to different places around Earth, red clouds at each point it stopped except the location over the Antarctic, where it started to again show him a fully spliced-out map of the city-base under the ice.</p><p>“Yes, yes, I already know about that one. I need one that’s not nine-tenths depleted,” Rodney complained. “Go broader. <em>Other </em>planets.”</p><p>The images jumped again and suddenly there was a smattering of blue clouds over five different planets in the galaxy. Rodney’s jaw went slack. “Holy crap.”</p><p>“What? What am I looking at?” John wanted to know. </p><p>“Keep looking at it,” Rodney ordered. He backed from the room and started running. “Dr. Jackson! General O’Neill!”</p><p>That was frustrating and John set his jaw and tried to stay focused. He squinted up at the map and pulled up a read out of information he couldn’t actually read, right up above his head in some blocky language he had no hope of ever making sense of. But the blue-variant light cloud zoomed into a few different places around the one single planet. One of the points had a series of symbols he recognized as representations of constellations. Before he could make sense of the added mystery, Rodney was back, with a small crowd, and multiple people were swearing at the projection over his head. Rodney started scribbling on the tablet.</p><p>“Got it. Okay, show them the others, Major,” he said. John frowned up at the images, concentrating, because it wasn’t like the chair had a rewind button. He managed it. It took him twenty minutes just to get to seven of those little constellation strings for Rodney to record. While Rodney and Weir and O’Neill argued about if the addresses really went to any ZPMs, John tried to ignore the Director’s voice by zooming in on the maps of the planets, just as he had done with the Earth base. It worked for one of them, showing a simple ring in the middle of a big cave or mountain or something. It wasn’t a complicated map, anyway, and it highlighted something that looked like that weird crystal-thing Rodney had shown him. McKay let out a “Ha!” and pointed up at the ceiling suddenly.</p><p>“I told you it could be done. He found them. Second try and he found them,” he said. He shook the tablet at the people around him who probably definitely outranked the both of them. “He just got here and already I’ve got <em>eight</em> addresses now. You want him to keep going?”</p><p>“How long has he been in the chair, Rodney?” asked Weir, quiet in the face of Rodney’s triumph and excitement. </p><p>“Half an hour, tops,” replied Rodney. He seemed to realize what he said then. “Oh, shit- Major…”</p><p>John took the hint without trouble and started mentally backing away from the maps and crazy data downloads making his head hurt. His nose wasn’t bleeding this time, but his head felt like stuffed cotton, and he wasn’t arguing with it anymore. He sat forward in the chair the moment the kick-panel was down and John could plant his feet solid on the floor. He rubbed at his temples and tried to clear his head. </p><p>“See, Jack, I told you we needed you here months ago,” Daniel Jackson complained, the man staring at the notes on Rodney’s tablet. </p><p>“Yeah, well, you’ve got Major Sheppard on that now so it looks like things are covered,” replied Jack. John chanced looking up at them, not quite sure if the General's vote of confidence was job security or not. O'Neill nodded at him. "Good work, kid."</p><p>John managed a smile, subdued by the headache, and got himself out of the chair. There was a lot of noise as Rodney and Daniel chased after O'Neill, wanting to know about getting a team together, about looking for the power source thingy, pressuring him incessantly about getting the base back to full power. John found himself stuck on his own again in the same room as Elizabeth Weir. The reason he hadn't wanted to come back to the chair that morning at all. <em>Right</em>.</p><p>"Yes, as the General said. Good work," she said in greeting. "I just received your paperwork a half an hour ago and you were already at it."</p><p>John scrunched his nose and hopped down off the dias. The woman was shorter than him, stood as tall as she could with her hands politely clasped in front of her, professional to the core, and John didn't want to be feeling like a giant and a mess all at once. Yeah, he had done something kind of cool. But that wasn't even his work. The chair apparently liked his genetics, and John… didn't really know if he was a fan himself yet or not. It seemed stupid to be getting accolades for something that had more to do with her than anything he had accomplished.</p><p>"Look. This - it's weird," he finally said. "Not even gonna lie about that. That's the only thing I've got figured out."</p><p>The polite smile faded to something more sarcastic and probably genuine. Weir nodded. "That it is. So that's definitely understandable."</p><p>"Is my being here gonna be a problem?" John asked.</p><p>"I was working up to ask you the same thing," replied Weir. "So. I suggest we give it a shot. No expectations, no rules, just see what we end up with. It's really a clean slate anyway, right? We don't know each other."</p><p>"Not exactly," said John. He wasn't going to open himself up to psychoanalysis from the woman with the psych degree but he wasn't going to lie. "So just… tell me I don't report to you and I'll try to go with the no expectations thing."</p><p>Elizabeth took a breath and squared her shoulders. "Unfortunately, you do report to me. The Carbon Pilot program moves you to the SGC, and I am the authorized SGC Base Director for Terra Atlantus Outpost and her expedition components. And as you are currently the only member of Carbon Pilot, that narrows the chain of command to two."</p><p>John tilted his head, one confused puppy. "Pilot <em>what </em>now?"</p><p>"Welcome to your new clearance, Major," said Elizabeth, a shade of an amused smile on her face. "This program is top secret, confidential. Which means it gets… weird classification titles. You are not a scientist, an engineer, or medical staff, and we have no planes or helicopters for this expedition. Your <em>duties</em> are classified, warranting a specific program, that will be expanded as it becomes necessary. And, for now, your program reports to me."</p><p>It didn't exactly make John feel any better about life in general, but there was at least a renewed curiosity to fall back on. He could deal with having to report to the woman. He just didn't have to trust her.</p><p>"Right. Well, I guess that works then, Director," he said. </p><p>"Right," said Weir. She nodded, glanced at his pack by the wall, and then back at him. "I'll send Chuck to show you to your quarters then. And I suggest you check in with Dr. Beckett once you're settled."</p><p>"Figured on that," said John. It was met with another approving nod, and she turned to leave, even got a few steps out the door, but Elizabeth hesitated and turned back.</p><p>"One favor, though, Major," she said quickly, soberly. "Next time you want to know something about me, don't call Patrick Sheppard. I met him twice when my sister married him. I was thirteen. He won't know anything about me, and it compromises his security clearance."</p><p>"Yes, ma'am," John said, automatic. He considered it a moment more, suddenly wanting to leave again. "Uh… does the-"</p><p>"Our situation shouldn't be a problem," she replied, shaking her head. "Unless we decide it is."</p><p>"It's not," said John, lying through his teeth. The Director didn't seem to notice. </p><p>"Very well. Thank you, Major. For your help," she said. Then she left to send in Chuck, the comms guy, who seemed alright. He got John where he needed to go, anyway, and the friendly conversation on the way was a good distraction from the new boss.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In the end, it turned out that John did a lot of stressing out for nothing. His days in the Ice Base - Terra Atlantus - consisted of pinging back and forth between Rodney McKay and Radek Zelenka and occasionally tracking down Carson Beckett because some Ancient device decided to shock him or something instead of work right on the first go. The only interaction he had with Elizabeth Weir was in passing, or when he was around Rodney, and John could handle that. There was a buffer zone there, because Rodney seemed to like her, and John could stand by quietly, with a smile pasted on his face, like a professional whatever-he-was. Carbon Pilot, whatever.</p><p>It took a couple of weeks for Rodney to catch on. And it really shouldn't have surprised John that he did. The guy was a genius, even if he had all the social graces of a horny thirteen year old, which was probably why the two of them got along. They got on probably too good. John had an almost daily conversation with himself in the mirror, reminding himself that he was still a member of the US military, and no amount of ice between him and Uncle Sam would save his ass from getting kicked out if he got too friendly with the Canadian contractor. </p><p>And, like an idiot, he still got too friendly with the Canadian contractor. And the genius eventually caught on. In the worst possible way. They were in what passed for Rodney's office, with Rodney doing actual work and John killing time because there were no gizmos for him to light up just then, and arguing about Batman (of all the stupid things) when Elizabeth ducked in to request their presence at an impromptu department meeting in her office at the top of the hour. John nodded his acknowledgement but didn't look back, while Rodney looked over at her, like a decent human.</p><p>"That's fine. About what?" he asked, distracted but mostly paying attention.</p><p>"You'll find that out when everyone else does," replied Elizabeth. She sounded amused, because Rodney hadn't been subtle about expecting the inside scoop. Even John had figured out Rodney was the favorite, while McKay saw it as a normal expectation of friendship that he get his questions answered when he had them, whether anyone else was afforded the time or not. He looked up as Elizabeth disappeared and his eyes focused right at John.</p><p>"Okay, what is the deal?" he asked, quiet. John frowned at him.</p><p>"What?"</p><p>"You and Elizabeth. Did you used to date or something? Bad breakup?"</p><p>John choked on air. "God no."</p><p>"Then what's with you? You just shut off if she gets within ten feet of you," said Rodney, motioning toward the once again closed door. John scoffed and scrunched his whole face to dismiss that entirely.</p><p>"No, I don't," he said. "We just aren't all of us the teacher's pet, Rodney…"</p><p>"See, that's the difference between us, Sheppard," said Rodney, lofting up onto an imaginary high horse about three feet off the ground. "I can accept when a colleague expects and embraces greatness. You… get jealous and get offended by favoritism. It's not your best look, really." </p><p>John rolled his eyes. "Trust me, Rodney. I'm not jealous. You can keep her."</p><p>Rodney frowned a little at that. "Okay… I was playing earlier. But now I'm kind of actually worried."</p><p>"What- why?"</p><p>"Because I consider Elizabeth a friend... and then there's us and I don't… I mean. Am I supposed to pick a side or something?" Rodney was quiet enough he was just barely not whispering. John raised an eyebrow.</p><p>"Us?"</p><p>"We work well," Rodney clarified, recovering badly. John leaned forward in his chair, head in his hands. </p><p>"What? I'm not wrong…" Rodney added. And he wasn't. And John wanted to laugh as badly as he wanted to not have to look his friend in the face just then. He also wanted to tell McKay the truth, to just be honest about <em>something</em> with the man, and have it be okay. But he couldn't, because it wouldn't.</p><p>"Nah, we work great, McKay," was all John said instead. He scrubbed at his face because his eyes stung a little, in the cold, before looking up at him over the desk again. "And no, there's nothing to pick sides over. I was just giving you crap."</p><p>Rodney stared at him, not buying it at all. "Huh."</p><p>He left it alone. They went to the meeting together, crammed into Weir's office with Carson and Zelenka and Bates and a couple of ladies John didn't know. Probably more IOA reps, like HR or something.</p><p>"I'll keep this short and sweet," Elizabeth began. She was all smiles and excited about whatever news she was sitting on. "Colonel Carter and Dr. Jackson managed to find and collect another ZPM. From one of the addresses Major Sheppard provided last month."</p><p>"Of course they found it, we told them- wait. They <em>collected</em> this one? As in, <em>we</em> get it?" Rodney asked, the genius brain tripping over an ego that somehow defended John's contributions. </p><p>"Yep. <em>We</em> get it," confirmed Elizabeth. Rodney looked happy enough to jump and John patted him on the shoulder, sharing in the smiles around the room.</p><p>"What this hopefully means," Elizabeth said. "Is enough power to run this place as a city instead of an iceberg. Maybe. Ideally. And still be able to run it as the necessary defense base. And then hopefully keep uncovering more of what makes this place tick, about the people who built it, even. All of which means, we'll be growing this expedition. Hopefully by half, if Rodney determines it's sustainable, once he gets the ZPM. But in the meantime, each of you are to audit your teams. See where you need some help. We've got the green light here so far and I don't intend to waste it."</p><p>John was still the head-labrat in charge of the chair and other devices unique to the city, and other than turning things on, his job was to document what they found and what they did. He made things light up, made doors open, found things behind secret sections of walls that hadn’t shown up on scans of the ice… and then he had to figure out what they did - or didn’t do - and argue with Rodney about which of them had figured it out first. He made the whatever-it-was work and Rodney and his computers made sense of it. And at the end of it, the only real thing John had to do that resembled <em>work </em>was to make a spreadsheet to keep track of it all and add stuff to it a couple of times a week. He didn't see <em>his </em>department growing any. </p><p>They only worked with the chair once a week because of the power draw, though. He was mostly excited to get to run the chair at closer to full power. That and the possibility of thawing out the walls and having a warmer bedroom would be great.</p><p>It wasn't entirely surprising when Rodney showed up at his door an hour after he was tucked away in his cold apartment. He had expected to celebrate by being antisocial for the evening. It still worked out, he figured, as he and Rodney were so far pretty good at being antisocial together. He hadn't expected the man to show up carrying the stupid Thermos. He shoved it in John's hands the second he opened the door. John glanced at it, surprised it still had the tape on it.</p><p>"Hey… what's-"</p><p>"We get the ZPM. We're celebrating," Rodney announced. And he pulled a small bottle of Canadian whiskey out of his jacket pocket, sloshing it around as explanation for the coffee. John grinned at that and nodded, went to his desk and found the metal camp mug he had kicked around in his stuff.</p><p>"And I brought TV," Rodney said, holding up a boxy, palm-sized external hard drive. "Where's your laptop?"</p><p>They had talked TV plenty of times, but not actually sat down together to watch any of it before. John found his shiny new top-secret laptop and handed it over. They settled in, shared a toast with homebrew Canadian Irish coffee, and within the hour, John kissed Rodney right on the lips. It was not at all the kind of thing approved of by Uncle Sam. It was easily blamed on the alcohol. Neither John or Rodney blamed the alcohol when they forgot about the laptop on the end of the bed and spent the next hour making out. </p><p>John was quite happily buzzed and warm and feeling great about his place in the world by the time Rodney needed to go back to his own quarters. Nobody would look at them funny for celebrating the ZPM, for a few hours, but overnight was impossible. Bates was too sharp, and too well-informed of John's record, would probably take the excuse to have John kicked out if he caught Rodney sneaking out. So with the agreement that it was something that would be happening again, John snuck in another kiss before saying good night. </p><p>Rodney left the Thermos of still-hot coffee on his desk so there was apparently no way to actually get rid of it. John took it back to him in the morning, with no one else the wiser where it came from. But Rodney was all bright smiles whenever John saw him after that. Their friendship settled in just fine with that shared secret between them.</p><p> It happened again a few days later, after Rodney spent most of the day getting the power systems adjusted to accommodate the dual ZPMs at the city's disposal. There was no celebratory spiked coffee that time, just the two of them, and a nearly-destroyed laptop they barely saved from falling off the bed because they forgot they had put it there.</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Once the new ZPM was in place, things at the Terra Atlantus Outpost accelerated at double the pace of their progress over the previous four months. As did their population numbers. Elizabeth found herself at the helm of a large expedition, nearly two hundred people strong. Everything got louder and warmer and more exciting by the day as the team put together more dots, connected more lines, and figured out better how the city worked and, by extension, how the Gate Builders worked. And John was now ready and able to use the chair's defense systems toward any attack, with no apparent problematic symptoms. The base was working exactly as it had been envisioned to, with the expected hiccups along the way.</p><p>It was something else to watch John Sheppard find a place in the mess of science geeks and computer techs. He avoided Bates and his security teams almost entirely, outside of professional courtesy, and stuck to Rodney. Maybe Carbon Pilot didn't have any management responsibility built in, aside from monitoring himself, but overall the young man had proven himself a natural leader to fill in the gaps for McKay's blustering and Zelenka's passive nature, which proved useful as their individual teams grew. For all most people did not settle comfortably around Rodney, they had definitely warmed to John. And it was enough of a well-oiled machine by the time he showed up that Elizabeth could stay hands-off and give the guy the space he had indirectly asked for at the start.</p><p>Atlantis was able to steal Daniel Jackson back with the new ZPM. Just for the excuse of setting it up. He dug into the translations on the Ancients’ computer system in greater detail and inside of a week he called Rodney and Elizabeth both into his lab, with its stacked computers and white-board table and wall, maps and scraps of Ancient notes.</p><p>“We’ve gotten closer and closer to finding the location of the lost city,” he said, a note of cautious excitement to his voice. “But it turns out that we’ve been looking in the wrong place all along.”</p><p>The search for the address had been one of the quieter aspects of the mission on the Ancient Outpost, something Daniel had been coordinating with his work at the SGC in ways that nobody else had access to, much to Rodney’s frustration. They kept it quiet because there was nothing to really be done by the people who day in and day out had to worry mostly about staying warm and incorporating Earth technology with the Ancient systems. Until they knew how to sync the two languages, until they really knew what the remnants of the city under the ice were capable of, there wasn’t much else to be done on-site. Rodney rolled his hand impatiently, urging Daniel to get to the point.</p><p>Daniel turned to the white board and pointed out the constellation markers scribbled across the top, one at a time, that all three of them were well familiar with.“We thought we had a gate address - six symbols, representing coordinates in space and time that should have determined the location of the planet the Ancients went to after they left Antarctica. Recently we determined the seventh symbol.”</p><p>Elizabeth watched as the anthropologist scribbled a seventh symbol on the white board behind him. She nodded as she recognized it and it’s placement. “The point of origin. Earth.”</p><p>Daniel allowed it but still shook his head. “That’s not it.”</p><p>“So your address must be incorrect,” said McKay. He was their on-site stargate expert when Daniel Jackson wasn’t there, and still Daniel shook his head at the observation.</p><p>“Not incorrect. <em>Incomplete</em>,” he said. He turned around again and drew a symbol in before the Earth origin. Rodney seemed to stutter, almost offended. He pointed at the extra symbol.</p><p>“You can’t do that.”</p><p>Daniel shrugged, more than a little smug about what he had discovered. “I just did.”</p><p>“What are you saying, Dr. Jackson?” Elizabeth asked. She was confused as she tried to fit the pieces together. An eight symbol address didn’t make sense. It would imply somewhere outside of their known galaxy...</p><p>“It’s an eight-symbol address,” said Daniel. He pointed again at each symbol in turn and then circled the last one. “What we’ve been looking for may be farther away than we ever imagined. But not out of reach.”</p><p>“Atlantis?” asked Rodney, excited enough but needing to clarify. Daniel actually smiled that time as he nodded.</p><p>“Atlantis,” he confirmed. “And I think we can go there.”</p><p>If things had moved quickly before that meeting, everything that happened afterward was at a break-neck pace. Elizabeth hardly had time to do more than breathe as she started double checking their personnel clearances and making sure the base had all the necessary paperwork in place to be turned over to an entirely new crew. The city-outpost was functional, it could support and provide for the minimum personnel required for it. They even had a botany department that had started growing seedlings for food, to help make the city sustainable under the ice, once they had the power capacity for the grow-lights. Her team had created something operational, set the blueprints and recorded every step along the way. </p><p>And with the green light from the SGC, they were going to do it again, to start over somewhere in another galaxy, looking for the people who built the stargates, to share knowledge and help provide vital technologies to Earth and humankind. It was amazing. Elizabeth was in a state of perpetual awe every time she considered what waited for them.</p><p>This was what she had worked for, her entire life built toward this one mission.</p><p>The one point that broke her excitement was the inexplicable impact it had on Rodney by the next day. The initial triumph had traded off for a nervousness she hadn’t seen from him in months, even something like sadness. McKay wasn’t someone who would usually wallow, his default was a busy sort of anger; he had no time to deal with the problems of other humans who existed only to conspire against him, so he didn’t. He grouched at them, snapped like an angry turtle, and stayed above things like sadness. It had actually been a sort of help for Elizabeth, because the man would barrel through anything, no matter her mood, and kept her focused on the task at hand from the start, when everything had seemed so overwhelming. </p><p>Now it was all overwhelming again, but they knew they could succeed, they had a path forward that worked, and Rodney had gotten quiet and distracted. When she asked him about it, the man predictably shrugged it off, dismissing her as talking nonsense and wasting both of their time. Elizabeth blinked at the blunt rebuttal but left it alone after that.</p><p>Not an hour later, the scientist was in her office, tablet in hand like he was busy and just stopping by. But his face said something else and Elizabeth folded her hands on the desk and gave Rodney her attention.</p><p>“I just wanted to confirm,” he said, with a tone striving for casual and missing in classic McKay fashion. “Carbon Pilot is assigned to Terra Atlantus Outpost, correct? The chair has to stay on Earth, so the project stays with it.”</p><p>Elizabeth pursed her lips and fought a smile. She had seen Rodney and John getting closer over the last month, by literal inches sometimes, crowding each other’s space, when Rodney usually made it a point to glare everyone out of his personal bubble. That didn’t apply to John Sheppard. A lot of things didn’t apply to the Major, stuck in his own isolated project scope. But in this case, however, Rodney’s assumption on the project being isolated and exempt was quite wrong.</p><p>“Carson’s come a long way toward identifying gene-carriers, but so far John is still the strongest candidate for any Ancient technology activation that we have on this expedition,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Carbon Pilot is assigned to the activation tasks specifically, not the chair alone. And it stands to reason that, if the expedition is to go out into an unknown universe to look for the technology and the people who created it, we’ll need someone with the ability to work with it. Potentially someone with a genetic code the Ancients themselves can recognize. So, no, Rodney. Carbon Pilot is assigned to the Atlantis expedition, not to the Atlantus Outpost.”</p><p>There had been a very slow relief that washed over the genius’ face then, though still something not-quite-Rodney as he stared back at her, wide-eyed. “John doesn’t know that.”</p><p>Elizabeth went unusually pale as she realized she would have to actually handle official correspondence with the young man who had made it clear he didn’t want to take orders from her. She had been hands-off for a month, always letting him find his own place with the teams that required his help. Sheppard established his own expertise on the expedition. It was a question of genetics and mental acuity working in tandem and not something Elizabeth had ever felt she could order or dictate, to him or anyone else, what was or wasn’t possible; that was more Rodney’s area. And now she had to step in. Just as if he were anyone else on the expedition’s roster.</p><p>“Well. I guess I’ll have a word with him. Clear that up,” she said, not at all looking forward to it. </p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>There was a part of John that wasn’t at all surprised. It figured that the expedition would be leaving. It was headed up by Elizabeth Weir, so of course it would leave John in the dust. The shitty part was that her career agenda was taking Rodney McKay with her this time. The cosmos were out to get him like that.</p><p>Air Force pilots weren’t supposed to hook up with grouchy science geeks anyway. There was a whole section in the military code of conduct that outlined all the rules John was breaking, all the reasons he was lucky he wasn’t the one getting kicked off the base. But for fucks sake, kicking the man to another galaxy seemed a lot like an extreme that not even John Sheppard and all his screw ups had asked for. </p><p>As a result, John had been more than a little cranky since the grand announcement that the Atlantus Outpost was folding up shop except for the skeleton crew that would be staying behind to get the next round up and running. He had probably said two words to Rodney outside of the basics required to do his job. What was he supposed to say? <em>Congratulations, you get to leave without me?</em> </p><p>There was a lot about the plan that John didn’t like, logistical concerns that didn’t make sense about sending McKay and his team to another planet when it would leave Earth down a Very Useful Genius. But even setting those aside, trying to trust that the genius knew what he was doing setting the outpost up for the next batch of geniuses, John couldn’t get excited about the stuff his friend had been working toward when all he saw of it was the endgame.</p><p>He was walking back from lunch - one of the first on his own after weeks of taking lunch breaks with the Ops team or McKay - and John rounded a corner to find himself on a near collision course with Elizabeth Weir. He stopped short and looked for an escape route. With no options immediately at hand, he pulled an about-face and headed back to the safety of public spaces.</p><p>“Major,” Elizabeth said. John shook his head and kept going.</p><p>“Not now, Director.”</p><p>“Major Sheppard! A word, <em>please</em>,” the woman returned sharply. John stopped and glared at the ceiling for a moment before he got his shit together and remembered how to be an adult. He made a fist and thumped it painfully on his thigh, trying to keep himself present, and then tucked his hands in his pockets before turning to walk back.  He scrounged up a polite smile. </p><p>“When do you leave, again?” he asked. But he was <em>polite </em>about it. Elizabeth, strangely, stood taller and smiled back at him. She was crafty and there was something on her face then that tipped John off that he shouldn’t have said anything. </p><p>“The expedition starts relocating in two days,” she said. “There are still nearly two hundred of us. That’s quite a few helicopter taxis to be run between here and McMurdo. The outpost will still be occupied for two more weeks. Myself and Dr. McKay will be among the last to leave.”</p><p>“Peachy,” said John. The rough translation of that timeline was that his week was going to suck until the new guy got in for McKay to train. The woman didn’t seem fazed by the sarcasm. It was insubordination, but she wasn’t military, <em>and </em>she was leaving. Not John’s problem.</p><p>“It’s come to my attention that you don’t quite understand the scope of your assignment, Major. I wanted to clear that up before we run into further problems.”</p><p>“How do you figure?” John asked.</p><p>“Carbon Pilot is an SGC program attached to the expedition,” Elizabeth said. “Not to the command chair. Not to this outpost. No different than Dr. McKay’s operations team or Dr. Beckett’s medical team. You are expected to come along when we leave.”</p><p>John’s brain threatened to stop. He stood there, struck stupid, for a long minute. “<em>I’m…</em> supposed to go to another galaxy.”</p><p>“Yes. There were emails sent out. Your electronic signature will be required and everything. I take it you haven’t read them,” Elizabeth replied. She seemed to be enjoying herself, anyway. John frowned and waved off toward the tablet sitting in his quarters with the unread emails.</p><p>“Of course I didn’t read the damn things. It’s just formal notice you’re leaving again, and taking <em>McKay</em> with you this time, and I’ve got better things to do with my time,” he said. He realized exactly what he had said after the words were out of his mouth and stared up at the ceiling again. The smug grin disappeared off of Elizabeth’s face then.  </p><p>“Look, John-”</p><p>“What are my options here?” John asked, cutting her off. </p><p>“Options?”</p><p>John didn’t think it was that hard of a question and he nodded. “Say I <em>don’t</em> want to get stranded in another galaxy. Am I out for disobeying orders again?”</p><p>“No… I won’t make you go with us. Every position on the expedition team is voluntary. Including yours,” said Elizabeth. “But I will ask you to reconsider. As you’ve seen, we need you there. It… well, to be completely frank, it may mean the difference between whether we survive or not. We’re going in search of technology that, so far, responds best to you.”</p><p>“That’s just how it is <em>here</em>,” John argued. He hesitated and frowned at her. “Why the hell doesn’t anything work for you, anyway? It should-”</p><p>“I don’t have the ATA,” replied the woman, voice soft. “We have so far found only seven others who have the gene, but it does not present the same in each case. Yours, like General O’Neill’s and Carson’s, appears strongest.”</p><p>John scrubbed at his face with both hands, trying to wrap his head around the mess. Carson would be able to make everything work. He was going, so he would just have to get over his fear of the Ancient tech if they were going to some world where it was everywhere.</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Elizabeth asked. “That’s what this entire expedition has been about. From the start.”</p><p>“Nobody told <em>me </em>that,” replied John. “I’ve been here over a <em>month</em>, and nobody thought to mention it. And you’re telling me it’s been baked into my job from the start, sure as hell doesn’t help that now, does it?”</p><p>“I assumed Rodney would have mentioned it,” said Elizabeth.</p><p>“Yeah, would have been nice if he had,” said John. “But it didn’t come up. So I’ll think it over, but don’t hold your breath, doc.”</p><p>“I think this is one of those instances you’ll end up kicking yourself for not taking advantage of, John,” the Director said. “Honestly. Talk to Rodney first-”</p><p>“It’s a bit late for trying to tell me what to do, isn’t it?” John returned. “I got myself this far. It’s not up to you.”</p><p>“No, it’s not. I haven’t said it was,” Elizabeth replied. He had struck a nerve though and saw the anger on her face easy enough. “I will say you’re welcome to <em>grow up </em>at any time. I understand the difficulty of our situation, I wish it was different every day, I really do. But there’s not a damn thing we can either of us do with it other than move forward from where we are. And I am trying. I <em>have been</em>. If you aren’t and you won’t, then that’s your choice. That should be something you consider here. Because if this stargate address is viable, this expedition is going, and <em>I am</em> going with it.”</p><p>“Yeah, leaving again. I was a kid when you did that,” John replied, more than a little bitter.</p><p>“So was I, John. And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. But it didn’t just happen to you, and whatever your decision, I’d appreciate it if you could<em> stop this</em>,” the woman told him, quiet again. "The expedition could use your help, Rodney definitely could, but I will dismiss anyone who asks. For any reason. No questions, no black marks, no retaliation assignments. It's all outlined in the email. When you can, review it. Go over it with Rodney if you need to-"</p><p>"Leave McKay out of this," John interrupted, annoyed and aggravated and suddenly more confused than he had started out. "What the hell does it matter to you-"</p><p>"It matters to me because you trust him, and he may be a lot of work for other people to handle, but he isn't for you. If he can help you, then I wish you would let him," said Elizabeth. "<em>Whatever</em> your decision. Just… let me know what that ends up being. However you get to it."</p><p>The Director excused herself to go to a meeting but John was ninety percent certain she was going to go cry. John felt that himself, but he was stubborn. Patrick Sheppard's voice was in his head, telling him to man up. <em>Grow up</em>, stop getting so goddamned emotional about some woman who didn't even know him. <em>Bullshit</em>.</p><p>John hadn't seen unfiltered daylight in a month and he suddenly realized the walls - no longer covered in ice since they had gotten power to the internal life support systems - were getting close. He stopped off at his quarters for a jacket and took the elevator up to the surface.</p><p> He couldn't just fly back to McMurdo and ignore it this time. But snow was snow. It was cold and bright and very real. There weren't many emotional breakdowns that could survive hundreds of miles of snow or sand, either one, because one missed step could pretty effectively end any emotional reaction to anything. Just like he couldn't bullshit a horse or bullshit the chair, there was no outsmarting snow.</p><p>Instead, John found a spot in the sun on the stair steps to one of the comms relay trailers and tried to sort himself out in the cold.</p><p>It was only a few minutes before Rodney showed up. John scrunched his face at the invasion of quiet and looked over at the sun rather than deal with his friend. It wasn't like Rodney had done anything wrong; classified was classified. The fuck up was solidly on Weir assuming things. What the hell did she know, anyway?</p><p>"Did you talk to Elizabeth yet?" Rodney wanted to know. His nose was already red and he hadn't even been outside for a minute. John rolled his eyes.</p><p>"As a matter of fact, I did," he replied.</p><p>"Good… then you know. You’re going with us," said Rodney.</p><p>"It's not exactly that easy, Rodney," John said, setting his chin on his elbow where he slouched against his knees on the steps. Rodney looked down at him, confusion plain. He opened his mouth to ask but the door across the helipad opened, catching their attention.</p><p>"What the hell'd you do, sell tickets?" John asked, kicking at Rodney's boots as he sat up straight again. Rodney kicked back, indignant. That was as far as it went because Jack O'Neill was the one who showed up this time. John was still Air Force, so he stood up off the steps at the General's approach.</p><p>"Sir," he greeted. </p><p>"What the hell, Sheppard?" O'Neill asked. It was an odd greeting, but John had figured out that the General didn't do things normally. His words were angry, but O'Neill's tone wasn't there yet.</p><p>"Well, that's a broad topic…" John replied, <em>absolutely</em> stalling at the risk of his career.</p><p>"I just had a chat with Dr. Weir."</p><p>"Oh."</p><p>"Right. And ignoring the part where she looked like she just watched somebody take an aught-six to Bambi, she didn't have much to say, other than <em>you</em> are considering not going through the 'gate once we get everything set up."</p><p>John hesitated as Rodney suddenly hit him with the full intense surprise of the very blue eyes. He tried to ignore it and nodded.</p><p>"I am considering it, sir," he admitted.</p><p>"Out here. In the snow. Because you <em>like</em> it here," Jack replied. John nodded. Jack waved him on. "And? So? Well? What?"</p><p>John hesitated, glancing nervously between his equally inquisitive friend and the General. </p><p>"All due respect to the mission, I don't trust Dr. Weir," he admitted. "Personal reasons. And I don't know if I can strand myself in another galaxy on her say-so. I can do just as much for the Air Force doing supply runs for McMurdo as I could on a dead-end mission."</p><p>The General shook his head, crossed his arms in very clear disapproval. "You know, this isn't about you, Sheppard. It's a lot bigger than that."</p><p>John set his jaw, annoyed at the man's ignorant logic. O'Neill didn't know what John was dealing with. And it was pretty damn big as far as John could tell. "Right now, at this very second, whether I decide to go on this mission or not seems to be about me."</p><p>General O'Neill seemed to get frustrated then, started to unfold to shake a finger at John, but he stopped and changed tracks after stuttering out nonsense annoyed noises. </p><p>"Let me ask you something," he said instead. "Why'd you become a pilot?"</p><p>"I think people who don't want to fly are crazy," John replied, because that was an easy, automatic answer he had known for years. The General nodded and stepped closer, at his full height and intimidating for it despite being no bigger than John.</p><p>"And I think people who don't want to go through the Stargate are equally as whacked," said O'Neill. He waved back toward the elevator shack across the empty helipad. "And in this particular situation, you're the nutjob who got this entire mission green lit. Over a hundred and fifty people down there, give or take, who took this job because you broke the rules and sat your ass in a chair you and I both know <em>you knew</em> you weren't supposed to <em>touch</em>. And now you're thinking about walking away from the ‘gate, leaving them high and dry on their own, because of <em>personal reasons</em>?"</p><p>Well… When it was put that way, John could better understand the General's very clear irritation with him. It didn't solve his problems for him, but it compounded the guilt by at least ten fold. It must have been on John's face, because O'Neill backed off.</p><p>"Now if you can't give me a <em>yes</em> by the time McKay freezes his ass off up here waiting for you to come to your senses, I don't even want you. Carbon Pilot is still an SGC, eyes-only project. I don't care what Dr. Weir has to say, I won't sign off on it," he said. It was a fair warning as much as a threat. The General took a few more steps back, distracted but heading out of the cold anyway. "So make up your mind, Major. You're either going to help these people, or your personal reasons are going to ground you, say at least until McMurdo's next supply run when this place shuts down to a skeleton crew. And they're stocked up for the month as of Wednesday. So maybe think about that."</p><p>John kept quiet as the General disappeared. Then he grumbled out "<em>Fuck</em>!" and sank back down to the steps. Rodney tucked himself into his jacket a little more tightly and watched him.</p><p>"I asked you about Elizabeth weeks ago," he said after a minute of silence.</p><p>"Yeah, well, you also didn't tell me about Atlantis, so we're even," John replied. Rodney scowled at him for it. John squinted up at him.</p><p>"If I tell you something, will you keep it to yourself? Like, I'm talking the <em>take this to the grave</em> kind of to yourself," he asked. </p><p>"You just got mad at me for <em>not</em> telling you something," Rodney pointed out, reasonably annoyed but still mild by McKay's usual standards. John scrunched his nose at him.</p><p>"You might want to sit down," he warned. Rodney glared at him for the help so John just shrugged. "Don't say I didn't warn you."</p><p>"Out with it already," said Rodney. </p><p>John grabbed a handful of snow off the ground by his boots, just to freeze his fingers, because he was a genius. It stalled on actually making him follow through on saying anything. He tossed it at Rodney, from too close and the entirely wrong angle for it to do anything, other than <em>pffft</em> off the front zipper and plop back to the ground in front of John's boots.</p><p>"She's my mom," John finally said, voice quiet and face screwed up against the fact that he was actually saying it out loud. Rodney stared at him, jaw hung open.</p><p>"<em>Elizabeth</em>?"</p><p>"Nah, Rodney, <em>O'Neill</em>," returned John, rolling his eyes. "Yes, <em>Weir</em>."</p><p>Rodney did sit down then, shoving into John until he made room. Sheppard let him share the step and bent sideways for another clump of snow. Rodney knocked it out of his hand before it could even get cold.</p><p>"You're serious," he said. John nodded.</p><p>"As a heart attack," he replied. </p><p>"But she's not <em>that </em>old!"</p><p>Again, John nodded. "I guess that's why I got adopted out to my uncle. She was a kid."</p><p>Rodney went back to staring at him, this time squinting at him, looking for similarities probably. "She doesn't have the gene."</p><p>"Yeah, there's that," said John. "So I didn't get that from her."</p><p>"You don't act like her," Rodney pointed out. "You don't talk like her. My sister has copied me since we were little and my aunt always said she looks like me- well, actually, she always said it the other way around-"</p><p>John frowned at him, confused. "I never met her until a <em>month</em> ago. How'm I supposed to do any of that?"</p><p>"There's a whole argument for nature versus nurture…" Rodney trailed off as John glared at him. "Right. Nevermind."</p><p>"<em>Anyway</em>." John shook his head, kicked at the snow because he needed to feel like he was doing something. He felt a little better just for having said something out loud, but he also felt worse waiting for the fallout. "Point is. Trusting her not to screw me over now goes against instinct at this point. Pretty basic self-preservation when the only reason anyone wants me around is some gene I apparently didn't get from her."</p><p>"Oh," said Rodney, the light bulb clicking on. "But, not to put too fine a point on it, the gene makes you valuable. You are the opposite of disposable or replaceable, currently. At least until Carson figures out the gene therapy he thinks he can develop."</p><p>Very concerned suddenly about his ability to choose friends for himself, John squinted over at Rodney. "Not helping."</p><p>Rodney shoved into his shoulder again. He was on a point and John wasn't getting it. </p><p>"Fine. You don't trust Elizabeth. Whatever," he said. "But I'm the one who needs your help anyway, not her. We go, we just… do things as we have been. It doesn't matter."</p><p>"It matters," said John. He was still trying to wrap his mind around why, though.</p><p>"So see a shrink, like the rest of us who have to deal with our birth-parents," said Rodney with a shrug. "We've got one going with us. She's alright. Hot. It's annoying."</p><p>"I can't tell a shrink. She'll write it down," said John.</p><p>"Not until we get there, and who knows if we get to come back when we go," replied Rodney. He made a face at John then. "And why can you tell <em>me</em> but you can't tell a shrink?"</p><p>John gaped at him. "Gee, I wonder why <em>I</em> might trust <em>you</em> to keep your mouth shut about something that could get me court martialed. <em>Again</em>."</p><p>Rodney had the presence of mind to blush and tried to shrug it off. "I'm not saying I was planning on saying anything. Was just asking."</p><p>"This is one of those things that's supposed to show up on a background check. And now we're in it, so what are we supposed to do about it?" Sheppard asked, quiet about it and completely rhetorical. "If the woman with the clearance is okay keeping her mouth shut, fine, but I'm still the one that's gonna get the blowback if it gets out."</p><p>Rodney watched him kick at the snow, frowning. "No wonder you don't trust her."</p><p>"I think I got a few reasons, yeah," said John. Rodney reached over and tugged at his jacket.</p><p>"I mean it, though. You <em>can</em> trust <em>me</em>. If nothing else, you already know I'm entirely selfish and I need your help, so you can trust I'll look out for my own self-interest, and that's still going to mean keeping you with me," Rodney said. John huffed a laugh and looked over at him.</p><p>"Like now. When you're trying to talk me into a potentially one-way trip to another galaxy," he said. Rodney bobbed his head.</p><p>"But, come on. That's at least a whole level of cool even you have never seen before, just getting to say that out loud and not be delusional," McKay pointed out.</p><p>"Snake-aliens, though, Rodney," John said. The hand that had fisted into his puffy jacket sleeve to tuck in for warmth was instead balled up to hit him out of simple annoyance.</p><p>"Nevermind, you are too stupid to survive if you go," he decided. Smiling for the first time in two days, John leaned into Rodney, looking to annoy him some more. It backfired when Rodney ducked his forehead to meet his. John called it a draw, stilled as he rested against his friend. It was nice to have one of those again.</p><p>"Fine. I'll go."</p>
<hr/>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The unexpected blow in the hall left Elizabeth shaken. She retreated to her desk and tried to distract herself with the preparation checklists but it didn't really work. The proof of the cut was apparently still on her face when Jack got to her door. The damn base being powered up meant that any door would open unless it was locked, but considering it was Jack, even the lock might not have kept him out. He leaned a shoulder against the frame and looked in on her. Based on the tight line of his lips, he didn't approve of whatever he saw, and Elizabeth wiped at her face to make sure the tears were gone.</p><p>"I talked to him," he said. Elizabeth blinked a few times, confused and trying to remember past her last effort at a conversation with O'Neill to figure out what the hell he was talking about.</p><p>"I told him to talk to Dr. McKay," she said when she finally caught up.</p><p>"Well, he's doing that, too. But I more or less told him he's going, so I'm telling you the same thing," said Jack. "He signed up. He can do the job."</p><p>"This is a volunteer expedition, General," Elizabeth reminded him. The man nodded</p><p>"And he volunteered. We committed the resources on his accomplishments-"</p><p>"I'd like to remind you that you yourself could have done any of these same things he has-"</p><p>"There's more to this stuff than having a gene flip on or off," Jack replied, not giving an inch. "I couldn't do this <em>and</em> run the SGC <em>and</em> get my teams back and forth where they need to be, Elizabeth. So no, I couldn't. He can. And he will."</p><p>"We aren't talking about flying helicopters over the snow. This is a volunteer expedition because we don't know what we may find. We don't know if we make it back someday-"</p><p>"The man is career Air Force and won't be coddled on that issue," Jack pointed out. "And I know that kid's record. He's pulled this shit on you because he can get away with it. If I gotta be the bad guy on this to get him to knock it off, so be it."</p><p>Elizabeth shook her head. "It has nothing to do with his record-"</p><p>"Bullshit, doc. I asked him what his problem is and he said he doesn't trust you. I called him out and he popped off with the first BS excuse he could give me," said Jack. "I know the game. He's just testing what lines he can cross. So I put one down."</p><p>"No, actually, the Major <em>doesn't</em> trust me. I believe him on that," said Elizabeth. Jack's face scrunched up in confused annoyance.</p><p>"He's been here a <em>month</em>, what the hell could you have done that he's up there bitching away his career?"</p><p>Elizabeth set her elbows on her desk and buried her face in her hands. "I knew his father. It's a long story."</p><p>"Fine," said Jack, shrugging it off and not about to pry on the topic. "Get him in to see the shrink then if family counseling will make you feel better about it. But short of quitting, that man is going, and this expedition is still on. I just wanted to make sure everybody's clear on that."</p><p>"Crystal, General," said Elizabeth, just barely biting back the sarcasm. "Thank you."</p><p>But for all Elizabeth hated Jack's tactics, they worked. An hour later, she had the required documents - waivers, personnel record updates, the whole classified mess- sitting in her email from John Sheppard. Rodney had finally gotten to the last of his paperwork, too, so her money was that they sat there and filled them out together. </p><p>That was all the more curious because John had very specifically listed Rodney as his on-site medical proxy, and Rodney had agreed to it, while Elizabeth had an active signature request from Rodney to authorize her as the one to make the medical decisions for him in the event he couldn't. He had asked her in person, explained that it wasn't that he didn't trust Carson to make the right decision, but rather he saw her as the first-line defense that would clear the way for Carson to make the right call if it had to be done. Roughly translated, it meant that Carson was the man's friend, and he wasn't going to make him decide to pull the plug on his own. Somehow, Elizabeth didn't suspect John had put as much thought into his choice as Rodney had.</p><p>The two authorizations were passed along with a handful of others and Carbon Pilot was added to the relocation schedule. Jack sent her an email the next day that just said "<em>I told you i was right</em>."</p><p>Were it not for the fact that Elizabeth found herself planning an expedition to another <em>freaking galaxy,</em> she very easily could have hated the man. </p><p>But she had plenty to keep her busy and had no problems avoiding him for the next few days until he and Daniel left again. Things came to a lull in the city as half their staff had been sent home to make arrangements to leave on a tour they might not make it home from again, and Elizabeth was still crossing t's and dotting i's to prepare for the next crew to take over the Terra Atlantus outpost.</p><p>Curiously, when John signed on to leave with the expedition, Rodney went back to his version of normal, as well. Those few days of quiet from the scientist had been noticed, by Elizabeth if not by his team. It had been a very brief but noticeable difference and it was reassuring that it didn't last. McKay was back to being snappy and impatient and running his team into the ground as they wrapped up for the pass-off. He was absolutely certain that the follow-up team was going to figure out how to burn the base to the ground and submitted an entire paper on the safest means he could find that might allow them to move the command chair to a more secure location. As if the bottom of the planet, under two hundred feet of ice, wasn’t secure.  </p><p>After a week of quiet and near-peace, Elizabeth wasn't expecting it when her office door slid open and John Sheppard stood in the threshold, waiting to be noticed. Elizabeth looked up at him, surprised, and it took her a moment to realize he was waiting for permission to enter. </p><p>"Major," she said, just acknowledging that he was there. If she had learned anything in her observations of the young man, it was that he would do as he wanted, her only job was to give him the greenlight or not. He stepped in the room, right up to her desk, but he couldn't quite manage the usual fake smile she was used to from him.</p><p>"I wanted to apologize for some of the things I said. Last week. Since I got here, probably," he said. </p><p>Elizabeth sat back in her chair, needing the familiar distance away from him suddenly. Usually it was John with the space bubble, but now he stood on the other side of her desk, direct and insistent, and Elizabeth wasn't entirely certain she could breathe with him there. She tried anyway.</p><p>"Well, you seemed rather honest about it so far," she managed. "I'm not sure I can fault you for that."</p><p>"Maybe, but I was still being an ass," he said. "I can think what I want but I didn't have to say any of it out loud."</p><p>"I suppose that's true," said Elizabeth. What was she supposed to say? That she was sorry her fifteen-year-old self hadn't been allowed to keep the baby-version of the angry young man in front of her? Something told her that wasn't what he was there to hear, apologies or not. John pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it over then. </p><p>"My little brother is an ass and sent me that," he said, not entirely dismissive. "I figured you'd want it since she was your sister."</p><p>Elizabeth unfolded it to find an old, faded photo of herself and her sisters at Sharon's wedding, Elizabeth around thirteen. Patrick was in the photo, too, and Elizabeth almost felt bad at the stark reminder that he looked absolutely nothing like the pilot who stood on the other side of the desk. There was nothing familiar there for John to see in the mirror growing up. </p><p>On the other side of the lineup of smiling faces stood the smaller version of Elizabeth, with her freckles and red-blonde hair. She had been a natural strawberry blonde until John was born, and ever since it had only been achieved with a bottle from the store or a stylist when she had time. And she hadn't had time in months. Elizabeth shook her head. </p><p>"I'm not sure I've ever even seen this photo," she said. John reached over and poked at the last kid in the row of four.</p><p>"I kinda figured maybe that one was you," he said, his tone still belying the guesswork. Elizabeth nodded and handed it back to him. </p><p>"You figured right. You can keep it, though. It looks like it was in an album-"</p><p>"I had this really old one, it's half dead now. My mom kept shoving stuff in it, so it stayed at Dad's place. I asked David to send me some DVDs I had there, and he tossed that in," John said. He reluctantly took the photo back. Elizabeth tried to take the comment in the spirit it was probably meant; he had told her about his mom, and of course she had always assumed her sister would be his <em>Mom</em>. But it landed different, years later, knowing that nothing had gone the way it had been supposed to back then.</p><p>"<em>One</em> personal item," Elizabeth reminded him, opting to switch tracks to something that was at least not heartbreaking and was mildly amusing instead. "You are allowed <em>one</em> for this trip. Not plural."</p><p>John smirked at her. "My <em>one</em> personal item is my DVD wallet. And a book I borrowed from McMurdo; not actually mine, so it doesn't count. I'll eventually return it."</p><p>Elizabeth set her face in her hand and pinched the bridge of her nose to make sure she didn't smile. They waited in silence for a minute, with Elizabeth honestly not sure what she should be saying, or even not-saying, to keep the man's good favor she had somehow accidentally found. Finally, John cleared his throat, polite front back up.</p><p>"Look, doc. I'm sorry for what I said, really," John said. "But… like you said, it was just being honest. I don't know what to do about that. So… the best I've got is what you said before. I guess we just… go forward. Not exactly a clean slate. But… I don't have to be an asshole about it. Everybody'll be better off for it."</p><p>"No expectations," Elizabeth said. John nodded and shrugged.</p><p>"You can expect I'm probably still gonna be an ass. But I'm… working on it," he said. Elizabeth let out a huff of laughter and shook her head.</p><p>"Thank you for the warning then," she said. John hesitated at that.</p><p>"You don't have to be nice back when I'm being a jerk, by the way," he said. </p><p>"As your boss, yes I do," Elizabeth replied. "And as a… human being who has an understanding of the difficulties at play here, I think I do. I feel, anyway."</p><p>"That's… weird," the young man replied. "I think, anyway."</p><p>"Well… maybe you were raised wrong," said Elizabeth with a shrug and a mild grin. Rather than get offended at a joke made at her expense, John considered it and then shrugged. </p><p>"Possible."</p><p>And after that, John stopped with the drastic avoiding tactics. The cutting remarks when he couldn't avoid her weren't quite as frequent and not as sharp. John Sheppard could give Rodney McKay a run for his money when it came to being an arrogant jerk, but he didn't let many people see that; so far it had been reserved for Elizabeth. But he eased back. He was still a jerk, as he figured he would be, but not to the degree that it would interfere with their work. They could be present in the same room, at the same time, without glares, rolled eyes, or blatant disrespect. Actual conversations happened, however small they may have been. </p><p>It still hurt, but Elizabeth could keep the Major in the little employee-box he wanted to be in. She couldn't write him up or send him to HR for attitude correction; that was the primary reason Carbon Pilot was an isolated project, because Elizabeth completely chickened out on trying to make the man report to anyone. No one would understand, and the fallout… Elizabeth simply didn't have the bandwidth to deal with it.</p><p>She rode out the wave of it until the day they left, and she was not at all expecting it when John dropped into the chair next to hers on the plane. He had his borrowed book from McMurdo in his hands as a backup, but he actually sat down near her with intent to be social. Elizabeth didn't trust it at this point, but it was at least more of an amusement than a point of concern.</p><p>"You are aware it's a long flight to Germany," she pointed out. John shrugged it off.</p><p>"What's with the stargate? What's that like?"</p><p>"I've yet to walk through it anywhere. All I have for you there is that it's big and it's blue. Very pretty, really," said Elizabeth. It likely wasn't anything he wanted to know about, but yet again, she found herself entirely clueless as to what John wanted from her. </p><p>He was moody and quiet usually, when he wasn't charming someone who wasn't her, or arguing with Rodney about whether or not some piece of technology would cooperate with him. Most people, Elizabeth could get a solid read on, it was her job and she was good at it. But every time she thought she had him figured out, there was always some annoying little detail that she couldn't see that seemed to block everything for her. It left her afraid to talk to him half the time, unless she had prepared a script to start herself off with and a bullet-point list to keep her on track.</p><p>The answer didn't settle him and he kept on, poking at the missions, at the stuff the teams had found while she was in charge of the SGC, at the aliens that had been involved. He wanted to know what he was walking into. And that, of course, was something all of them wanted to know, because none of them had any idea at all. </p><p>"We are dealing with different galaxies, John. What we know of the cultures in our own galaxy won't necessarily be relevant to what we find in Pegasus."</p><p>"Yeah, yeah, I get that," he replied, frustrated but for once not at her. "But this… isn't exactly Afghanistan, either, you know? I just got here, and now everything science-fiction is real, so how do we know if we find what we're looking for?"</p><p>That was a larger question than Elizabeth had expected from him. "I think this is one of those instances where the end goal may just be the destination, not the journey. When we get where we're going, then we reassess. New goals, new plan of attack. We have to take what little we know and be flexible with it, try to match up what we can and start over fresh. We have the team for it, we have the skills, and we know we can do it because we already have. Sort of."</p><p>John scrunched his nose at that. "Yeah. I guess."</p><p>Elizabeth chanced patting his arm before turning to the stack of paper reports she needed to verify before they reached Colorado, eventually.</p><p>"What if there's no chair, or anything?" John asked. "We could get there and find out I am just as useless on that genetics thing as everybody else. Then what?"</p><p>"Then we find the best place for your skills," said Elizabeth. "Just like if there's no computers, there's nothing for the operations team to do, we would have to change the assignments to best disperse what assets we still have. We can plan to pivot, but until we have eyes on Atlantis, we don't know what we are working with."</p><p>"But we'll have something to do, right?"</p><p>"That's a guarantee, yes. There's too many of us to keep alive and fed, and not enough… resources we can count on, aside from each other," Elizabeth replied. "I don't care if it means Rodney has to take up farming to keep things going. We can't assume anything about where we will end up, or what we will find, and we have to be ready for anything. Anything at all."</p><p>"That does <em>not</em> preclude snake-aliens."</p><p>"No, it doesn't."</p><p>That seemed acceptable to the man and he settled in like he planned to actually read his book. "Rodney owes me five bucks if there's snake-aliens."</p><p>"My god, John," muttered Elizabeth, amused despite herself. The man just smirked at his book and went quiet for a while. He piped up with random questions over the next few hours, about the SGC, about the mission charter, about the President of the United States. Small conversations happened. John kept his snipered comments about her shitty parenting instincts to a minimum, though not less than zero. Still, <em>better</em>. Elizabeth started to get tired but felt a little less lost. </p><p>At some point she curled into her seat and fell asleep under her jacket. When she passed out, she was in her own space, but she woke up to using his shoulder as a pillow. John didn't give her any grief for it, only awkwardly pat her on the head and went back to staring out the window. She sat up a little more in her sleepy slouch and tried to respect his space anyway, barely managing a doze the rest of the flight. </p><p>For the last leg of the trip, they had a regular airline connection and the team scattered, everyone going home to wrap things up. Elizabeth had only a matter of days with Simon and she didn't know what she would tell him. It was classified. She couldn't tell him the truth. Days of lying and then disappearing seemed like an exercise in torture.</p><p>She had tried to get him to apply for the job now held by Carson months earlier, but he refused. He had a practice and patients who needed him, he couldn't just walk away for a job he knew nothing about other than it meant a military contract.</p><p>"You don't even like the military," he had reminded her in his email. "I don't understand why you think I would want to be involved." </p><p>Given how lucky they had been that Carson's background included genetics work, Elizabeth couldn't really complain. So she resolved not to bring it up. </p><p>After months of being in constant contact with her team, it was odd to have quiet for those few days. She packed away things she knew Simon wouldn't want to be kicking around, stacked them up for her sister to put in storage for her. She played with the dog more than she talked to her fiancé, out of simple guilt. Simon was glad to see her, they had missed each other, but there was a cloud over every smile and touch because she had to lie, had to let him think she was coming home in a few months, like everything was normal. </p><p>It hurt that she had helped do something amazing, something that could change the trajectory of mankind for the better, and she couldn't tell him. Elizabeth put in the request with the chain of command to let her make one exception to the rule, and she sent along a video explanation of a condensed version of the truth to be checked and approved or denied, just so he could at least know <em>something</em>.</p><p>Simon did call her on it. He noticed. And Elizabeth stuck to her resolve and didn't tell him. But she covered for the lie with a truth. She told him she had accidentally met the son she had given up for adoption when she was a teenager, told him it had been one of the worst experiences of her life all over again, and that she was now stuck worrying that the full-grown adult version couldn't keep himself out of trouble. She left off the part where she worked with the young man now, that he would only be out of her sight for a few days but she was still worried anyway. And Simon stared at her like she had lost her mind for nearly a full minute.</p><p>"You never told me that," he said. He shoved food around on his plate rather than look at her after that. </p><p>"I didn't think it would ever be worth knowing. And I tried very hard not to think about it," Elizabeth said, shaking her head. "It always kind of… blindsided me when it did show up. It wasn't how I wanted things to go at the time. That leaves a mark, you know?"</p><p>"It still seems like one of those things you could have mentioned," Simon replied. And, once again, Elizabeth found herself apologizing for things beyond her control because she couldn't fix <em>time</em>. Another reminder that her choices tended to have repercussions that other people didn't ask for. And she still couldn't tell Simon about the expedition to another galaxy that she had personally arranged to oversee.</p><p>His choice had been to take care of his patients and his practice in the city. Her choice… would have a slightly wider impact if it was successful. They were adults, Elizabeth reminded herself, and neither of them had ultimately chosen the other. </p><p>She fell asleep on the couch that night pretending to read a book. In the morning, she left to Colorado, without having told him anything that might jeopardize national security. When she got to the SGC, she withdrew her request to read her fiance in on the Atlantis expedition. He would figure out she wasn't going to be back soon and either wait as he promised, or he wouldn't, and in the worst-case-scenario, the White House would let him know if she wasn't coming home at all. In the meantime, Elizabeth had said her goodbyes.</p><p>The SGC under Brigadier General Jack O'Neill wasn't exactly as tightly run a ship as it had been under Hammond's care when Elizabeth had inherited it, but that was so long ago suddenly that her hair had grown out to the natural red-brown, the stylist-perfected blonde nearly all chopped off. Of course things would change over the better part of a year. It seemed much more crowded now that her team was cramped inside a mountain alongside the regular SGC complement.</p><p>Rodney knew his way around the base and had set right to work helping prepare the stargate for the necessary boost to try the address. Jack was only letting them have the one ZPM that they had used at the outpost; it would have plenty of power, by Rodney's estimations, but they didn't know how much it would burn through to initiate a wormhole to another galaxy. They were going to find out, and they weren't going to waste it.</p><p>Carson and Zelenka and the other department heads were all running through checklists of their teams' necessary equipment, making sure everything was packed on their pallets and ready to move. The only exception, once again, was Major Sheppard, who O'Neill had likely already lectured to about not touching anything, and who was avoiding Rodney McKay like his life depended on it. The Major looked quite lost, like a wide eyed little kid, and this one was holding a gun. The P90 was a new look on him; Elizabeth quickly realized she didn't like it, but she kept that opinion to herself. He was Air Force, he was a trained soldier, and it was to everyone's benefit that he be armed.</p><p>"Major," she greeted, cordial.</p><p>"Doc," he replied. And then he fell in as her shadow because he had nothing better to do that wouldn't get him into trouble. Jack gave him an approving once over when he collected her for the briefing and nobody questioned it when she included him. The Carbon Pilot project was what got them a ZPM to spare and the coordinates to multiple planets with Ancient technology, not just the Atlantis address to another galaxy, so John's two months on the program had faded out that black mark within the SGC.</p><p>Elizabeth quickly learned, however, that it wasn't the case for everyone. Jack introduced them to the military representative on the expedition, their formal head of security now that their need for it had grown beyond a handful of soldiers. He was bringing along fifty marines, because the overall US military establishment was antsy about the Air Force getting the sole credit for an opportunity like Atlantis and wanted it divvied up somehow. The SGC soldiers who had been assigned at the outpost would go with them, but the rest of their front-line defense team would be the Marines.</p><p>"I thought Carbon Pilot was assigned to the Antarctic outpost?" Colonel Marshall Sumner asked, the moment after Jack completed his introductions.</p><p>"Not at all, Colonel," said Jack, quick to pounce on that before risking Sheppard's opinion on it. "That whole magic-blood-voodoo thing goes where the expedition goes."</p><p>Sumner motioned toward John, not at all polite. "And <em>he's </em>the only one who can do it?"</p><p>"So far, that we've found," replied Jack. He seemed to catch on to the Colonel's attitude. </p><p>"Given his record, he shouldn't be going," the Colonel said. Elizabeth's jaw dropped at the bold and rather decisive announcement. </p><p>"Excuse me?" The words were out of her mouth before she fully realized. "His record has <em>no</em> bearing on this expedition-"</p><p>"I don't want soldiers who don't know how to follow orders signed up on any of my teams. Maybe the papers like to say he saved the day, brought back three men breathing, but there was one more that didn't make it. And that wouldn't be the case if he hadn't gone AWOL in one of <em>our</em> choppers," Sumner replied sharply. </p><p>"<em>He's</em> right <em>here</em>, sir," Sheppard said, tone even and forced flat. "And all due respect, <em>you</em> weren't there. I was cleared to fly a year ago."</p><p>"It's not your flying I'm worried about," returned the Colonel.</p><p>"This isn't your command, Colonel." Jack watched the exchange close, his irritation banked. He had his hands in his jacket pockets but the man was not calm about the problems unfolding in front of them. When Sumner looked over at him, Jack nodded toward Elizabeth. "This <em>civilian </em>expedition is authorized and commissioned from the tippy top, and Director Weir is who you answer to. Not the other way around. Just to be clear."</p><p>"Director Weir is not the problem here," said Sumner. Elizabeth crossed her arms and glared at the man.</p><p>"Neither is Major Sheppard. As the lead on Carbon Pilot, he reports to me. He is <em>not</em> in your line of command, Colonel. Therefore you don't need to concern yourself about whether or not he can follow orders," she informed him. "He can, and he will, but they won't be coming from you."</p><p>Sumner looked to O'Neill for confirmation on that before he nodded his very reluctant acceptance. "Fine. But I want it noted, I consider him a security threat to the expedition."</p><p>"Noted, Colonel," said Jack with a curt nod. "And formally disregarded. The Major is on the roster and he stays there." </p><p>Elizabeth realized then she hadn’t factored in everything, after all, and had to start reevaluating the mental threat assessment she had run on the mission. Sumner was the type to do his job, sure, but if he was that bent out of shape about Sheppard’s record, him and his fifty marines could take more control than the civilian expedition had been built around. She knew how to handle men like the Colonel, there were plenty of them in the political realm she so frequently found herself in over the course of her career, and absolutely no different than some of the men in academia. Sumner’s kind just came equipped with a gun. It changed the stakes a little.</p><p>The chaos of the day stepped up not long later as Rodney checked in that they were ready to go on the ZPM burn to establish the wormhole. John faded off to the gateroom to disappear among the other Atlantis expedition uniforms. Elizabeth herself went down to rally the troops, as it were, offering the volunteers one last chance to back out now that they knew the tech was going to work out. One more threshold crossed. One more point of no return. But Elizabeth was both exhilarated and intimidated when no one left the room. Her crew was solid. They were all going to Atlantis. </p><p>As she left, she edged around John and gave him a bright smile, surprised when the man returned it. She squeezed his arm and started off, hesitating when she saw Sumner heading for the Major. Elizabeth was short and disappeared easily behind a few members to observe the Colonel a moment, make sure he wasn’t going to try to counter her orders to the team. Instead, he stood at John’s shoulder, surprising the Major as he had been adjusting and checking over his gear.</p><p>“Keep it in line, Major. You are not here by my choice,” she just barely heard the Colonel say to the man.</p><p>“I'm sure you'll warm up to me once you get to know me, sir.” It was almost cheerful but Elizabeth recognized John’s bitter sarcasm easily enough. It was so <em>nice </em>not to be the one on the receiving end this time.</p><p>“As long as you remember who's giving the orders,” the military Colonel said. </p><p>The technician’s voice over the loudspeaker in the room announced, “Chevron Two encoded.” And Elizabeth knew she needed to get up to the ops deck and check on her mission. She still hesitated, worried about the Colonel’s attention to John. But when she looked back to them, she saw that Sumner had already moved away from the Major.</p><p>“That would be <em>Doctor Weir</em>, right?” she heard John call after Sumner. There was a smile on her face as she watched Sumner turn back to glare at John; they saw each other easily where she lingered in the doorway. The Colonel moved away to check with Bates and Elizabeth made her way quickly up the stairs to the control room. </p><p>Moments later, Elizabeth suddenly felt an excitement like nothing else she had ever felt as she stood with Rodney and Jack and watched the dialing sequence go through without a single hiccup. The MALP images returned a dark, empty room, but there was definitely a destination on the other end of that wormhole. Their address was correct and fully locked. They had found the lost city of Atlantis.</p><p>“Sensors say there's oxygen, no measurable toxins. We have viable life support,” came the excited report from Dr. McKay as he looked over the computer screens. He looked back to Elizabeth with the most genuine smile she had ever seen on the man’s face. “Looks like we're not getting out of this.</p><p>Jack O’Neill nodded, looking pleased himself. “Doctor Weir, you have a go.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The look of jealousy on Rodney’s face almost made the whole trip worth it. The order could come down to pack it in, go home, whatever; John was happy. He walked near one of the weird looking table-consoles in the upper floor area and it lit up next to him, just like the steps had when he touched them, just like the screen in the middle of the room. The new city responded to him the same way the old one had. Somewhere downstairs, Carson was having a similar experience, John was sure. And Rodney scowled at him for it. </p><p>A half an hour later, however, the fun of it settled down. The business of staying alive started up rather quickly and of course it was Colonel Sumner’s ugly mug that brought out the bad news. John followed Weir as Sumner escorted her down to an observation deck his men had found, and they stared out at a massive cityscape that was completely submerged under water.</p><p>“I'd say we're under several hundred feet of ocean. If we can't dial out, this could be a problem,” the Colonel said, just to make the point explicitly obvious. That was a polite way to put it; John was pretty sure they were screwed, but he wasn’t going to say it out loud.</p><p>“Colonel. Doctor Weir...” came Rodney’s voice then. John pounced on the chance to torment his friend again, though this time it was a little less to give him crap and a little more to warn him they were going to be needing his brain functioning sooner rather than later on the little not-a-vacation McKay had talked him into.</p><p>“McKay,” John said lightly. “We're under water!”</p><p>“Yes I was just, uh, coming to tell you that. Fortunately there is some sort of a force field holding back the w...water.” Rodney’s voice trailed off as he looked up from his tablet to actually look out the window. He moved up to shove into John’s shoulder to share his view. “Oh, that is impressive, isn't it?”</p><p>John nodded, allowing himself a moment to enjoy it with him. </p><p>It ended sooner than John liked. Rodney remembered then why he had tracked them down and he escorted Weir and Sumner off to another room where Carson had activated an Ancient device that looped up a story about the city. About the wars that had abandoned it, specifically. The Lanteans and some ominous foe that outnumbered them and cornered them, wore down at their defenses too quickly for even the ZPMs to be able to keep up. That was the trouble with ZPMs; they held infinite amounts of power, but only if they were allowed proportionate recovery time to account for the draw. And from the trippy hologram projections John saw of the fighting that had bombarded the underwater city, there wouldn't have been sufficient recovery time for even a fully loaded ZPM to hold up forever.</p><p> Then the cautionary holodeck movie was killed because the city's power was draining fast, and suddenly everything started coming faster as the force field started to collapse and the underwater city started <em>drowning</em>. The city’s power was failing as the city woke up and the system started diverting resources. </p><p>“What about the ZPM? This is the very reason why we brought it with us,” said Elizabeth.</p><p>“Yes, that’s a very useful point, however this place doesn’t look like the one back home,” Rodney replied, the stress getting into his tone with the usual sarcasm. “So until we locate where to plug it in, the spare ZPM is just a stack of useless crystals for this particular problem. We can’t look for their power center and get the generators synced up all at once. And we’re just overtaxing life support in the meantime.”</p><p>But they had a stargate. They had a way out. It just wouldn’t get them home.</p><p>“Then the rest of us relocate,” John said. “Just temporarily until Ops can get the forcefield back where it needs to be.”</p><p>“I just said we don’t have the power,” Rodney argued.</p><p>“Not to get home, maybe,” agreed Elizabeth. “But what about somewhere else?”</p><p>“Somewhere else in <em>this </em>galaxy,” John said, clarifying just to back her up. The Director nodded. Rodney looked from Elizabeth to Dr. Grodin, who just shrugged and nodded.</p><p>“It uses power, but if we can trim it up, we might eek a few days out,” Rodney said. “And we found a list of gate addresses when we got our systems talking to each other.”</p><p>“So pick one,” said Sumner.</p><p>And just like that, they had a new plan. Weir politely ordered Sumner to put an advance team together to check for a safe enough planet to move two hundred people to, on short notice, for an unknown, potentially long period of time. Grodin briefed them on the Iris and the GDOs for the return identification codes. Grodin and McKay figured out how their new stargate worked and Sumner disappeared to clear the gateroom below them, ordering Bates to find the MALP. Elizabeth watched the man as he left the room, frowning as she debated something there. Then she looked to John.</p><p>“Major, I want you to go along,” she said. It was an order, but it wasn’t one she would enforce if he wanted to bow out. John hesitated. While he had started to figure out that Elizabeth Weir would step to bat for him, he wasn’t so clear on whether or not Sumner wouldn’t take the easy opportunity to trim the fat off his military presence and strand him once they got to another <em>planet</em>. He nodded, motioned vaguely toward the control panel Grodin was using to work the stargate that was now humming and spinning and carefully locking down coordinates.</p><p>“Wherever we’re going- they have one of these?” he asked. Grodin nodded as he pushed buttons with their funny symbols, apparently in a particular order to match something on his laptop screen.</p><p>“They should, yes. A DHD is usually within a hundred yards of the gate off-world. At least… in the Milky Way,” the man said. Rodney looked up at John then, brow furrowed. Whether he had tuned into what John was worried about or not was anybody’s guess, but he seemed to understand the question. </p><p>“Look for a big stone statue, circle with engraved tablets, with symbols like these, and a gem in the center,” Rodney said quickly. “You dial the address with the symbols, then push the center when they're all lit up. Easy.”</p><p>Out in the gateroom, the stargate lit up with the watery <em>whoosh </em>and collapsed back to the wall of blue behind a shimmer of white. It was the definition of awesome, but John had a healthy enough respect for what it could do that he was just a little afraid of it.</p><p>“What’s the address back here?” John asked.</p><p>“Lt. Ford and Colonel Sumner know how to use the DHDs,” Grodin said, helpfully. “They worked with the SGC teams-”</p><p>“That wasn’t my question,” John replied. He watched out the windowed wall over the gateroom, distracted as Sumner’s team sent their MALP through the gate downstairs. Rodney pulled his attention back when he grabbed his arm and shoved his sleeve out of the way. He scrawled a bunch of symbols on his skin with the goddamn sharpie he had in his stupid jacket pocket. Because normal people carried around sharpies to write on people with.</p><p>“You’re getting a pocket-protector for Christmas, nerd,” John muttered at him. Rodney hardly bothered to glare at him for it.</p><p>“Ha,” was all Rodney said to the threat. He rubbed his thumb over the letters to make sure they would stay before letting John have his arm back. “There. If lost, return to: <em>here</em>. Now go and stop wasting my power supply.”</p><p>John glanced from Rodney to Elizabeth at the order. She smiled faintly and nodded, confirming it, and John headed out. He got there in time to grab a night vision headset from the guy minding the gear left behind in the gateroom; apparently the MALP had reported a safe enough planet that was stuck in the dark.</p><p>It had been a couple of months since John had gotten to fly anything, and even longer than that since he had flown a fighter, but his second go-round walking through a wormhole across space and time and all that was pretty damn close to the same high on the other side of it. He shook it off and found his delayed arrival had caught Sumner’s team’s attention. Thankfully nobody thought to shoot. </p><p>John followed them out and Sumner ordered them paired off to search the dark for threats. It was an open area, certainly enough room for their expedition, probably even to camp if they wanted to just pitch tents outside the gate, but it was too empty and exposed. It wouldn’t be safe. So they pressed into the woods. Looking for aliens. In the dark. </p><p>John had definitely seen this movie. And it hadn’t turned out well for the good guys.</p><p>To his relief, however, the only aliens they ran into were a couple of kids. Their father showed up shortly after they did and Sumner didn’t make their presence known in the Pegasus galaxy by murdering the locals’ young. That wasn’t something John could have figured out how to report back to Elizabeth, so there was a whole level of gratitude for the Colonel’s restraint.</p><p>The kids were alright, barely teenagers, and John was their favorite person because he let them play with the night vision goggles. It earned him another glare from Sumner, which was a bonus, and the good favor of the boys’ father, which got John a solid <em>in </em>with the local’s leader, someone named Teyla. </p><p>Lt. Ford, John, and the Colonel were allowed into a tent-like hut, but the other three were told to stay outside. Sumner didn’t like splitting up, even if they were within shouting distance. It made the man a little characteristically cranky, but John rolled with it. It wasn’t his team anyway, the Colonel had made that clear.</p><p>The locals thought they were there to trade and that was a good enough place to start. Teyla Emmagan liked John better than she had patience for Sumner, too. John very quickly decided that he liked the Pegasus aliens. He completely forgot to ask Teyla if snake-hijackers were a problem for their people when he found out about their definitely-not-snakes Wraith problem, though.</p><hr/>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>...and that's all until the beta catches up. XD</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Everything had to happen at once. That was, apparently, the only way it would be accomplished. All at once, with no chance to plan. But so far, <em>plans</em> kept going wrong. Elizabeth took a breath and rolled with it when John showed up with children and parents and cousins and friends and pets and sheltered them all in their gateroom.</p><p>Precisely as the city stopped drowning and started <em>rising</em>.</p><p>The Athosians weren't a threat, now that the city was above the water line and life support systems weren't draining whatever was left of the city's ZPM. Rodney and his team had given up on searching the mess of a translated computer system and had gone in search of the central power supply themselves, going ironically manual in a world that should have been digital. With Sumner off-world, the next ranking military officer on the team was, of all people, Major John Sheppard, so Elizabeth had Sheppard send Marines with each Ops-geek to make certain there were no surprises as they searched the city for power signatures. Only then, with the operations team working to get the city online and safe from technical errors that could cost lives, was Elizabeth able to take the report from John.</p><p>Because what the actual hell had gone wrong that a team sent to find a safe harbor for their own refugees had returned with an extra hundred strangers to protect.</p><p>"They have an old city there," Sheppard told her. They left the crowded operations level for an outdoor balcony, one that they only found because the doors happened to open up when John walked near them. "I didn't get a great look around it, I went with Teyla to another site. But their ruined city probably looks a lot the same as this one. The locals think the ruins are, I dunno, jinxed or something but Sumner went to check them out anyway. Teyla said they stay out of them because they think exploring them will trigger a culling. And it looks like maybe they were right."</p><p>"What- a <em>culling</em>?" Elizabeth asked. John was still amped up from the day so far, speaking in a rush as he tried to fill in the missing information. Keeping up was possibly going to be as difficult as when Rodney went on one of his lectures, but she tried.</p><p>"Aliens. Like the <em>bad</em> kind," said John. "They're called the Wraith, make you see stuff that's not there. They feed off the planets in this galaxy, cull them every few generations. Teyla didn't know of any planet that didn't have to deal with cullings."</p><p>"Where is this Teyla? I think I should talk to them-"</p><p>"That's the thing here, Doc. She's been taken. Along with Sumner and two of our men and I'm sure more of Teyla's people. I saw these- look, this is gonna sound <em>looney</em>, like abduction-theory crazy, but I <em>swear- </em>this arrow-shaped flying ship trailed a bright beam of light and it zapped her up-"</p><p>"Zapped?" Elizabeth asked. John shrugged and seemed to flounder, out of ways to explain what he had seen. That was not ultimately helpful. Elizabeth crossed her arms and tried to slow the information flood down by steering him on to a new direction. "How do we know that they survived being zapped?"</p><p>"The kids. Jinto told me. Their dad went up," said John, motioning back toward the gateroom. Thankfully there was distance there and Elizabeth looked out on an ocean horizon and fresh air rather than back to the impromptu triage area that their gateroom had become. Carson's team was swamped, just like every other team.</p><p>Elizabeth was swamped. She had no resources to respond to an attack. It was a civilian expedition with a protective detail. If whatever had attacked the Athosians came after their city, they had no defenses left. They only barely had power.</p><p>"What I'm getting at, here, is during the attack, Ford was by the DHD. He got six of the symbols off the thing. That's almost a full address. We can figure out the missing one easily. And when we do that, we can get our people back," said John. He motioned back toward the crowded gateroom. "And Teyla and Halling. Their people, too."</p><p>Elizabeth stared at him, struck absolutely speechless by the suggestion. She shook her head and leaned on the railing, breathing in the salty sea air and trying to focus.</p><p>"We are not equipped for simple <em>defense</em>, John. We cannot even <em>think</em> about rescues when we know absolutely nothing about what we are up against," she said.</p><p>"We have the Athosians, and we shot one of those things down-"</p><p>"We have no <em>tactical </em>advantage here. We have second-hand accounts and a wreck. That does not tell us where they are, if they're even still alive, how they are being kept and by who, or <em>what</em>, and what kind of logistical nightmare we would be sending a team into," Elizabeth pointed out, ticking off each reason with a finger folding down.</p><p>"We can't get all the way out to another galaxy and start leaving our people behind," argued John. "We're all we've got out here, and if you're gonna walk out on them now, too, this is gonna be one short tour."</p><p>"Don't start with me on that right now, John," Elizabeth cut in, absolutely no tolerance for the guilt-trip when she had enough staring her in the face in the present-tense. "You <em>know </em>I'm right on this. The Ancients lost their war with these people. We don't have the resources to risk losing and we don't have the information we would need to minimize that risk. I'm <em>not</em> suggesting we <em>leave</em> anyone. I'm suggesting we not <em>lose</em> any more than we already have, and we focus on keeping alive the, what, <em>three</em> hundred people we still have with us now that we have the Athosians..."</p><p>"You wanna run a cost-benefit analysis on these people's lives, then factor in what you lose when those people see us walk away without trying. They're gonna see that next time it happens, it's gonna be them who gets taken, them who wasn't worth the risk. And then what?" The challenge was entirely unfair, but of course John would make it anyway.</p><p>"If we lose you to a rescue mission, that's then <em>every </em>life in this city forfeit," Elizabeth said, firm and resolved. "That's the big picture you're missing by focusing on who we lost. I promise you, I don't want to leave anyone behind, but we are limited by the facts, John. By our <em>resources </em>here."</p><p>John shook his head. "The only reason I was able to get out of that box in Afghanistan is that I already knew nobody was coming for me or my crew. We were on our own, no resources, just dead men walking, so the only thing we had to lose by giving it a shot was the chance that we got out."</p><p>"We <em>just</em> got here," Elizabeth replied quickly. "No part of this expedition is dead yet."</p><p>"Then stop acting like we are. We've got a shot at this. Maybe it's slim, but it's better than leaving our people to die."</p><p>"Fine. Get me the information we're missing and something like a plan. But I don't want you to run it."</p><p>"It's kinda my job." It wasn't like John's sarcastic reply was wrong. But there were loopholes that made it irrelevant.</p><p>"One that Colonel Sumner doesn't want you to have. So there's no reason to give him another chance to kick you off his roster," replied Elizabeth. John stared at her, head tilted as he tried to get a read on her.</p><p>"Is that the Director making the call, or my mom?" And for once it wasn't a sarcastic jab or a comment meant to cut and sting. But it was the first time he had referred to her as anything other than <em>Doctor</em> or <em>Director</em>. That was possibly a whole different kind of hurt and Elizabeth couldn't quite spare the brain power for it. She wrapped her arms around herself against the wind and blinked back tears as she looked out at the sunset over the water.</p><p>"Yes," was her only answer to that. "I'll make it an order if I have to. <em>If </em>a rescue is feasible, I don't want you to go."</p><p>John was surprisingly quiet at that. He finally nodded. "I'll see what we can find out first. Then we'll deal with the rest later."</p><p>Elizabeth nodded her agreement and kept her attention out on the sky. John brushed her shoulder with his as he left the balcony and headed back into the noise. Elizabeth took a deep breath and tried to focus. They hadn't even been in Atlantis for twelve hours and everything had gone completely to hell.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>After what could only be called a nap, in the empty room off Ops that Elizabeth had claimed as her office, John felt a little more on his game. It had been a little over a day since they had arrived in Atlantis, meals had been MRE rations very carefully doled out among more than just the original expedition members, and they were all living on massive kegs of water they had brought from home, because, ironically, they hadn't figured out yet if the water from their now-floating city was drinkable. It was a limited supply, but it would get them a few days. Elizabeth had the science geeks working on that issue, too.</p><p>Carson was setting up a proper medical bay to accommodate the broken bones and lacerations from both the attack on the Athosians and the shake-up on Atlantis that had knocked everyone around when the city popped up out of the ocean. The marines had kept up their mapping of the city even after the Ops team was done with them. They had found the central power supply in another building, and even what was probably a command chair like John had used at home, from the sounds of it. But John didn't exactly have time to help them explore that, and at last report, they still didn't have the full power to risk playing around with it, no matter how useful a detailed map of the city would have been to all of them. They had the entire expedition and their roughly one hundred alien refugees confined to a single building roughly twenty stories tall and no one was exactly comfortable with it.</p><p>It was around noon according to John's watch - nobody really knew how time worked on this new planet yet - when Rodney walked back up to Ops command deck from wherever the hell he had been. John was pretty sure the man hadn't slept since they got there, and who knew how long he had been awake before that. McKay didn't really have an off-switch to get him to sleep. John bumped his shoulder as he walked up to the console where Elizabeth stood talking protocol arrangements with Chuck. The Director gave McKay her full attention with hardly an apology to her comms chief.</p><p>"What's the report, Dr. McKay?" she asked.</p><p>"Good news/bad news," replied Rodney. "The bad news is, the city's ZedPM is depleted."</p><p>This wasn't a surprise after the chaos of the city force field the day before and Elizabeth just nodded. "Good news?"</p><p>"Above water, the demand on life support systems is lighter. The atmosphere is breathable, notwithstanding the inevitable allergens," Rodney went on, making a miserable face at the logical point of potential allergens in the air. That was going to be a fun experiment for a lot of people, John was sure. It was certainly one of the reasons he preferred the desert and the snow.</p><p>"So, as a result. We're running basic operations off our generators, and, drum roll please… the ZedPM we brought with us has the city's shields up and running, for the moment. We're still testing to sort out how long they'll hold, but they exist," said Rodney. And the man had a very proud smile at that triumph. They hadn't had to worry about shields in the outpost back on earth, so it had probably taken him a minute to figure out getting them going manually.</p><p>"We needed time. You got your time," said Elizabeth, sounding relieved for her part. Rodney rolled his eyes at that.</p><p>"What I need is a <em>nap</em>."</p><p>John turned to face him more directly at that. The geek wasn't allowed to take a vacation until he had taken care of the stuff John asked for; it was the hazardous downside of playing favorites like they did. "Not yet. When can you tell me where the Wraith took Colonel Sumner and the others?"</p><p>Irritated at the reminder, Rodney instantly started to complain. "Even with the six symbols Lt. Ford could remember, there are still hundreds of permutations…"</p><p>"Seven hundred twenty," John offered helpfully. Rodney's jaw dropped and John was choosing to believe it was because the man was tired, not because he thought John was an idiot jarhead like he considered the rest of their military complement.</p><p>"I knew that, of course," Rodney said, recovering quickly enough. "I'm just surprised <em>you </em>do."</p><p>John rolled his eyes at him for it and shoved ahead with the orders rather than let the insult hang there long. "Take away the coordinates you can't get a lock on. That'll leave you with the right one. When you find it, send a MALP."</p><p>Rodney huffed out a laugh. "Oh, you're a quick study on the stargates I see."</p><p>It got him glared at. "Rod<em>ney…</em>"</p><p>The scientist waved a hand, dismissive, annoyed, and tried to move on. "I'm sorry, I thought we didn't like Sumner because he didn't like you. Why are we wasting-"</p><p>"Because that's not how it works," John said, his patience tested at yet another tired insult on his pride. He straightened up and crossed his arms. He could at least try to bully Rodney for appearances sake but he was pretty sure it wasn't going to work. "Besides, he's not the only one who got taken. We bring back anyone we can get, including him. We didn't get all the way out here to start abandoning people."</p><p>"Somebody needs to tell me when rules like this change," said Rodney, waving a hand between them.</p><p>"McKay!"</p><p>"Fine! I'll look into it."</p><p>Look into it, he did, and within another hour they had their address. The problem was, the MALP belatedly showed them the stargate the address was attached to was floating in space. They couldn't exactly walk through the gate for a rescue operation. John wanted to kick something and he couldn't, so he ducked his head and leaned into Rodney's space a little more than he should, trying to get grounded again. They had been on the right track, but no one could have predicted a space-gate. John certainly didn't know it was possible.</p><p>"Come with me, Major," Rodney said, standing suddenly. "I have to show you something."</p><p>So John followed him out and up, ending up in a multistory docking bay of sorts, with weird log-looking metal boxes stuck out on piers around the circular bay. Rodney waved him up a ramp and John obliged. The lights turned on as he entered, and John quickly realized the little <em>logs</em> were actually ships. Small, kinda cute little aircraft... for <em>space</em>.</p><p>"Think you can fly it?" Rodney asked, following him in. The man was tired and grumpy, and he looked it, but he was still offering John a solution. <em>If</em> John could figure out yet another piece of Lantean tech that nobody else had a chance with.</p><p>The ship was kind of like the chair back on Earth. It dug into his head, seemed to figure out what he wanted even as John did. Yes, he very much <em>could </em>fly it. Rodney pointed out the access hatch in the wall, way up over their heads outside of the craft, said it matched the dimensions of the craft, and the little ships’ measurements fit perfectly inside the stargate. They were <em>designed</em> to go through the 'gate.</p><p>John moved the craft around, up and down, and got a feel for how it moved and behaved in that limited space. It was as close to perfect as John could have dreamed up. He parked it and turned to Rodney.</p><p>"So that'll do it," he said. Rodney nodded.</p><p>"If you're insane enough to do this stupid thing, then yeah, it'll do it," Rodney replied.</p><p>"I can't leave them there. Did you see what Carson found off that… arm… I brought back? These aren't snake-aliens."</p><p>"My point exactly." He stabbed at John’s shoulder with a finger. “<em>And</em> you owe me five bucks.”</p><p>John pouted at him and poked him back but the game faded off quickly.</p><p>"I still… look, I've done this before. I can do it again," John pointed out. "You got the base on Earth working. You got <em>this one </em>working."</p><p>“I’m working on it, anyway,” Rodney allowed. "But <em>how </em>are these the same scenario at all?"</p><p>"Because I know I can do it. Just like I knew you could do <em>this</em>," said John, waving around at the city in general. Whether he actually won the geek over with logic or loyalty, John would never know for sure, but he took the help he could get. When Rodney stood up with a “<em>Fine, but you still have to convince Elizabeth,</em>” John nodded and shadowed him as headed out to leave. Rodney looked from him to the back hatch.</p><p>“You could probably get that open easier than I could,” he pointed out. John checked in with his mental instinct on that and figured Rodney was probably right, but he just nodded.</p><p>“In a minute,” he said, tugging on Rodney’s fingers as a hint. Rodney reached out quite suddenly and held John into a desperate hug with nothing more said. Holding him tight, John buried his face at the man’s neck to try to hide, just for a minute, from the stress of the last twenty four hours beating in on them both. It had been more than a week since he’d been in the man’s space bubble, the both of them quite aware of the code of conduct on the super-secret Air Force base. That week of playing by the rules left them stealing time on another planet, hidden in a small spaceship, riding the exhaustion and adrenaline high of dealing with the existence of actual aliens.</p><p>John didn't want to let go just because he didn't know what would happen after he did; he had no time to plan. If he got approval, he had to get a team, and they had to do recon and get their guys back. If flying spaceships weren't enough to get approval… he had to figure out how to not get court martialed from within another galaxy when he tried it anyway. And Rodney needed at least five minutes of sleep.</p><p>They finally gave in to the demands of the city. John asked the ship to open the hatch and Rodney walked off the ramp, promising to go find Elizabeth for him. "But I'm not asking her for you," he added.</p><p>"I got it, buddy," John said. He closed up the hatch and went back to the front, playing around with the flight controls and getting a feel for having a spaceship hack his brain. He found a few new tricks and made the ship disappear, watched the invisible cloak engage in the reflection off one of the other ships' front windows. It was so cool. He poked up at the hatch at the top of the docking bay, asked it to open, and watched it slide away like any other door in the city.</p><p>He looked down and saw Rodney and Elizabeth walk in the room, watched the man get agitated at him for disappearing. John smiled as he lowered the ship and the cloak blinked off. He saw them easily through the front window, holding the ship at an easy idle without hardly having to think about it. He took a guess at an exterior speaker system and the ship gave him the mental green light.</p><p>“You said you want a tactical advantage?” he asked, immensely proud of himself when he heard his voice echo slightly outside the ship. Elizabeth crossed her arms, her surprised expression trading off for sober stubbornness.</p><p>“Alright, so you can fly that thing. It doesn't mean you can pull off a rescue," she pointed out. John's smile faded off, not realizing it as his expression suddenly mirrored hers.</p><p>“Doctor, <em>this</em> is why you brought me here.”</p><p>And despite her degrees and her career and her politics, that wasn't something the woman could effectively argue with. She went quiet for a long minute, all sorts of emotional debates happening right there on her face ten feet in front of John. But finally she nodded. Just like that, John had his official approval for the rescue mission. No court martial this time. That would make things a little easier, anyway.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>"This is all very exciting, Lieutenant, but I still haven't heard an answer to my original question," Elizabeth said. She stood not far from the doorway of the room she had claimed as her office, looking down over the catwalk railing on the gathered crowd of Athosians happily celebrating the return of their loved ones in the gateroom. Lieutenant Ford and Major Sheppard had been successful in their rescue mission, but John looked pale and bruised and not nearly as celebratory of their victory as Aiden Ford was. And neither of them seemed overly eager to explain where Colonel Sumner was. Ford looked suddenly uncomfortable.</p><p>"He didn't make it, ma'am," said Ford. "He was dead when I got there, and the Wraith were working on Major Sheppard."</p><p>Elizabeth went wide eyed at the casual mention and she looked to John for confirmation. He shrugged, not at all boastful of the survival. She returned her attention to Aiden as he seemed far more helpful on the matter suddenly. At very little prompting, he finished his report, detailing the Major's handy use of standard ordnance to bring down the Wraiths' Dart ships, and the smart flying and weapons work in the Puddlejumper. It wasn't just the ATA gene that had enabled the Major to complete the rescue, but also skill and attention and experience. He was an Air Force pilot with a now established track record of lucky rescues. And he didn't seem terribly proud of himself for it in the aftermath.</p><p>Elizabeth let Ford finish his account of events before sending him off to get checked out by Dr. Beckett's team, and then to the Marine in charge of the building that had been taken over as barracks for their security attachment. He was due a rest break finally, and a formal place to sleep, and those were to be his priorities for the rest of the day. The Lieutenant acknowledged the order almost cheerfully and left them on the bridge in front of the office. Elizabeth reached out then and caught John's arm in a careful tug to urge him into her office. To her surprise, he didn't resist.</p><p>"You're certainly quiet," she observed. It was an invitation to break the silence. John glanced back at the glass door to be sure it slid closed behind them, then looked back up at her.</p><p>"The Wraith didn't actually kill the Colonel," he said. "I just… haven't corrected Ford about it yet."</p><p>That wasn't what Elizabeth had at all thought she might hear. She quickly found a chair and sat down, motioning for John to take the other. He again shrugged it off.</p><p>"John, what happened?" she asked.</p><p>"These Wraith… they kill people by, just- I don't know how they do it. But they sucked the life out of him. Just- right then, as I watched. She put hands on him and he just turned into an old man, just skin and bones. He couldn't do anything," John said, still standing at loose attention near the door.</p><p>"My god," said Elizabeth. She couldn't even imagine what he described, but she believed the account. It had very clearly left a mark on John. He had resolved to make his report, though, and kept his head up to do it.</p><p>"She was torturing him, trying to find out where we came from. And these Wraith things get in your head, easy. They make you see things that aren't there. Based on what I've already seen with the ATA crap, the city and the ships and everything? If they can put stuff in, they can get stuff out. When I was down there, I felt her trying to get in <em>my</em> head, had a helluva time keeping her out. So I don't know what he told her, but she sapped him so dry, I don't know how he didn't tell her everything. And the only way to help him was to take him out. So I had the shot. She had her hand over his heart, just feeding on him, and I shot her hand. I, uh, I killed Colonel Sumner. But I didn't tell Ford or the others because-"</p><p>Because it wouldn't be believed. Despite having already worked with John for over a month, Bates had very quickly adopted Sumner's opinion of him and his record, and that would undoubtedly spread, even without the help of the confession John had just made.</p><p>"No, don't tell them, Major," Elizabeth said suddenly. It was as close to an order as she could make it. "I've taken the report. And you can treat the events prior to Lt. Ford's timely arrival as classified."</p><p>He hadn't been expecting that and looked her in the eye, something almost like anger following the surprise. "I don't want you trying to clean up after me or something-"</p><p>"No, Major. This is bigger than you," Elizabeth replied. She waved toward the door and the big glass wall that looked down on the gateroom. "This is an entire expedition and then some now needing a way forward. One we don't have if a unit of Marines react before they understand. None of us here, aside from the Athosians perhaps, and yourself, have seen or experienced the Wraith, what they do. From the sounds of it, they killed Colonel Sumner. Not even Carson could have saved him, from what you described. You showed mercy, not malice. But until the others understand what we are up against, telling anyone the truth puts you at risk. Which puts the safe operation of this city at risk."</p><p>"I am really tired of hearing that," John replied. "I am not that goddamned important, Elizabeth."</p><p>"You are. Carson is. Rodney is. Radek is," said Elizabeth. "We don't have enough people to waste. We're on our own. Look at it however you want, but you are still stuck with the fact that you're our most accessible <em>key</em> to this city working. And yes, fine, blame me for that if you want. But I can't do what you can. None of us can. So on this? Just know the Wraith killed the Colonel. You did what you had to. If you were too late getting there to save him, that's on me. And that's an order."</p><p>John let that sit between them for more than a minute, working it over, still angry, even refusing to look at her. Elizabeth stayed where she was, elbows on her knees as she wrung her hands and stared at the floor.</p><p>"Just for the record?" John finally said. From his voice alone, Elizabeth knew it was going to hurt because she recognized the sharp, biting tone from the first month of their acquaintance. Sheppard could be an ass when he put the effort in, and Elizabeth knew what it sounded like. She looked up at him anyway, planning to weather through it.</p><p>"It really sucks not knowing where these calls are coming from," he went on. "You're the Director here. You're supposed to just do your job. Not clean up after me. Not bench me because you don't want your kid to get hurt. I'm just trying to do my job."</p><p>Elizabeth smiled back down at the floor, not surprised at all, because she had definitely figured out the kid's tell.</p><p>"John, I am ultimately responsible for every soul in this city now," she said. "So I can honestly tell you there is little daylight between the two perspectives making the executive decisions right now. I may be a terrible candidate for motherhood, but I'm going to protect those under my care as best as I know how. That includes you. As the originator of the Carbon Pilot project <em>and </em>as family. This is <em>new</em>. I don’t know how to separate that out for you."</p><p>The word <em>family </em>seemed to hit him perhaps unexpectedly. Whatever he was about to say on the matter disappeared quickly, however, as the office door slid open. Elizabeth looked up, further surprised to see an Athosian woman standing beside Carson Beckett. She stood to greet them more properly.</p><p>"Excuse me, Dr. Weir. I thought ye might want an introduction to this lovely lass here," said the cheerful Scotsman.</p><p>"Uh, yeah, Doc," said John, awkwardly stumbling to change mental tracks. "This is Teyla Emmagan. The Athosians here are her people. She's… well, I guess she's their <em>you</em>."</p><p>Elizabeth was rather caught by the woman's dark eyes and kind smile just then, but she managed to make sense of John's introduction. She offered her hand in greeting out of habit, feeling stupid when Teyla didn't quite seem familiar with the gesture.</p><p>"Teyla, this is Dr. Elizabeth Weir. She's the Director in charge of our expedition here," John went on. Teyla figured out on her own that she should return the gesture and took Elizabeth's hand for a moment, the both of them suddenly laughing at what was clearly foreign to her.</p><p>"Welcome to Atlantis," Elizabeth offered. She glanced from Teyla to Carson and back. "I hope Dr. Beckett has seen to your injuries-"</p><p>"Ah, she'll be right," the doctor said. "A few scrapes and bumps. Nothing to help with much."</p><p>"I wanted to thank you for sheltering my people," said Teyla, her focus on Elizabeth unwavering. "And for sending Major Sheppard. Not many in your position would have done so."</p><p>John straightened up, noticeably smug at the comment. Elizabeth only nodded. "The Major would not have had it any other way, I assure you."</p><p>Teyla glanced at him for it, the pair exchanging a smile that likely would have flustered Rodney if he had been present. It certainly hit Elizabeth in the chest and she barely remembered to breathe for a heartbeat. Then the brown eyes were back on her, chasing her years of practiced decorum in all things politics right out the door.</p><p>"I wish to assure you, my people will work alongside yours to ensure your success establishing yourselves here," Teyla said. "The Major made it quite clear your people are not familiar with our stars, our peoples. There is much we can help each other learn. When it is safe to return to Athos, my hope is that our people will remain friends and allies."</p><p>"That is precisely the reason we undertook this journey, Teyla," said Elizabeth, returning the woman's smile. She could only hope to have found such a kindred spirit as the Athosian leader seemed to be. Something caught her attention at the corner of her eye and she glanced over to see John Sheppard cross his arms and smirk at her. It was enough of a clue and she mentally pulled back from the enamored fascination with Teyla. She shot the Major a look to make him check his face; <em>he </em>wasn't one to talk.</p><p>"Now that you are here and safe, let's see if we can arrange accommodations for your people. My team is still testing the power grid but if it's agreeable, we can try to find individual residences for everyone," she said, waving back toward the door. "We've so far not had much luck finding people to be willing to split up and the best we've been able to offer are a few larger rooms. But I think there are family dwellings that would serve everyone more comfortably."</p><p>That offer wiped the smug look right off John's face. He unfolded and started after them in obvious protest. "Now wait a minute… <em>I</em> don't have my own room..."</p><p>Elizabeth cast a smug look of her own over her shoulder at him. "You'll have to check with Dr. McKay on that, Major. I put him in charge of placing the Operations team. He moved your things shortly after you left this afternoon."</p><p>That took some of the heat out but he still followed after them. "Oh. Right."</p><p>Teyla looked between them, a curious and attentive expression on her face. Elizabeth offered a nervous smile; oh, she was in trouble now.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After a week of getting used to Atlantis, things had calmed down a lot. The power situation had been settled and the marine teams were slowly clearing sections of the city that could reasonably be turned on. They had a working medical bay, a mess hall to make sure everyone was getting fed across the shifts, and the science-geeks had claimed another level somewhere but god knew what they were doing (John certainly didn’t.) There was a building not far from the central tower that Botany was arguing with Rodney about because they wanted multiple levels of grow lights. They wanted their own generator and Rodney said that was foolish, but he was also quite attached to the thought of <em>not</em> starving and the dilemma was adding to his stress load. </p><p>Which John was acutely aware of because the two of them were just barely not roommates. Their doors were immediately around the corner from each other and they shared a wall, which Rodney had hinted could be cut through. John didn’t chase that thought down too far, though. Bates and the Marines might have been bunked in another building but John knew better than to assume that meant he could let his guard down. His record was enough of a target on his back, and even if they only knew half the story, John still hadn’t gotten to that Wraith ship in time to save Sumner and the soldiers who respected the Colonel held that grudge pretty firmly. John was still the ranking officer in the expedition's military population so he had to be able to stare them all down, and he wasn’t sure he could do that with a <em>secret door</em> to Rodney’s apartment. The guy could just use the front door and they’d take their chances without architectural subterfuge.   </p><p>The Athosians were another sore spot with Bates. Wherever the man had served his tours, he hadn't had good luck with the locals. And after the Wraith showing up and nabbing him and the Colonel on Teyla's territory, it left him pretty sour on the community they had rescued. It wasn't safe to send them home to Athos, as every time John and Teyla went back to scout it out, the damn Darts blasted through the stargate within ten minutes. And they never once went near the old ruins, so there was something else that had the monsters watching the burned-out remains of the Athosian village. The idea had been floated that they were tuned in on John, like his magic DNA was some kind of Wraith catnip that would bring them out wherever he showed up. It wasn't like John could exactly argue that, but it didn't seem likely.</p><p>So Bates kept his annoyance aimed at the new refugees and did everything in his power to keep them confined to the building they had scouted for the tribe. And John did everything in his power to fly in the face of that bullshit, from introducing them to the concept of movie nights and scary stories marathons in the community rooms of the central tower, to bringing Teyla on as an official member of the off-world team Elizabeth wanted him to put together. The expedition was still getting established in Atlantis, with enough trouble working with what they already had on their hands, but they were going to have to get out there and start looking for food sources sooner rather than later. John knew of no one better suited than Teyla to help them find the best stuff. He trusted her, it had been decided and announced that they were friends now, and she had the local knowledge base that John's personal experience told him not to question. Rodney even liked her and she seemed amused by him. </p><p>Elizabeth liked her, too. John got a quick, harsh glare when he proposed adding the woman to his team, like he was dancing near territorial lines, and John just smiled at her for it. Dared her to do something about it without saying a damn word. Elizabeth showed up at the mess hall that night with Teyla, and John invited them to the table with him and Rodney and Zelenka, but they only waved at him and bowed out to eat somewhere else, on their own… together. Rodney huffed at it, confused.</p><p>"I think we were just snubbed," he observed. "Rude, really."</p><p>John smirked at him but didn't say anything. Funny enough, though, John got the greenlight for Teyla to join the team the next day. The downside to that was that it meant Teyla was there for the morning meetings, and she soon had to experience first-hand the efforts Bates made toward isolating the Athosians when she helpfully volunteered her people's assistance in searching and mapping the city.</p><p>"All due respect, I don't see that happening," said Bates. "My teams can handle it."</p><p>The problem with the phrase <em>'all due respect'</em> was that it was apparently <em>universally </em>known to be <em>devoid</em> of all respect, and the Sgt. managed to offend Teyla as nearly the first order of business. John glanced at Elizabeth and saw her blood pressure rising to match Teyla's, so he stepped in and played peacekeeper that time. After that, they had to tag-team a little to keep Teyla from going rogue and giving Bates an <em>actual reason</em> to dislike her, like a black eye or some busted ribs. </p><p>To force Bates to meet in the middle, John suggested that Teyla and some of the Athosians start working with Bates' teams on training; just basic local history, maybe trade some fighting techniques. John had already set up a dedicated gym level, and had plans for a modified shooting range set to go, both in the building that served as the Marines' barracks, so they had plenty of safe space to work out their differences through sparring and weapons training. And Teyla could safely kick the man's ass, without getting into any trouble, and they would <em>all</em> feel better for it.</p><p>While movie nights with the Athosians were their own interesting blend of curious personalities and culture-shock, the ones just for John’s new team were actually fun. They were designed to be. The team was supposed to go off into the great unknown together once things settled into some kind of order at home, but John didn't know Lt. Ford or Teyla any more than they knew him. And Rodney <em>said </em>he wanted on the team, but he was surly about having to be social when he could have been doing something important and sciencey instead, which wasn’t exactly helpful out in the field. So there were team-only gatherings for practice runs.</p><p> For movie night, John immediately discovered that he had to drag Rodney away from his lab, by the arm, drop him on the couch, and wedge in next to him to keep him penned in, but from then on, he was part of the team. Maybe they weren't making out but they were watching TV and that was the next best thing to a date, anyway. For everyone else, it was just a matter of catching Teyla up on the way of the world they had come from, just for an hour or so. She said that seemed fair, given that they were immersed in hers for every other hour of the day. That was <em>exactly</em> the team spirit John was looking for. He made sure the troops had popcorn and that seemed to be a point of mutual interest for all four of them. They were bonding already, and that was really the whole point.</p><p>John hadn't quite been expecting it when Elizabeth showed up at their second team movie night. He had just paused the screen to explain to Teyla the play that had just happened on the recorded football game when Weir walked in. It was toward the end, so no big deal, but she very clearly had an agenda that was going to call an end to the official team building exercise, John just wasn't quite sure what it was. </p><p>"Hey," their boss greeted, in a pleasant enough mood from the sounds of it. "What are you guys doing?"</p><p>John looked over his shoulder to see Elizabeth leaning on the back of the couch, between him and Teyla. For her part, Teyla looked up at Elizabeth briefly, already back to her bright smile. The woman's hand went unerringly to rest on Elizabeth's and John raised an eyebrow and stuffed popcorn in his face as a bad recovery. He pointed at the screen on the wall across the room, one of the Lantean ones that Rodney had rigged up to a laptop just for movie nights. </p><p>"We're teaching Teyla how football is the cornerstone of Earth's Western civilization."</p><p>Elizabeth rolled her eyes at that. "And you didn't invite me?"</p><p>"Wait. You like football?" For a second, she got him. John had to look back up at her to see the sarcasm.</p><p>"No, not really," she said. "Hockey, maybe, we'll talk."</p><p>That was almost offensive. John waved at the screen, which very definitely did <em>not</em> have hockey sticks anywhere on it. "Oh, come on! It's real, it's unpredictable, it's full of passion and... beer... hotdogs."</p><p>"Cheerleaders," added Rodney, sounding oddly bored. John shot him a confused glance. He knew for a solid fact that cheerleaders could get Rodney going… when there weren't real, live women in the same room as him, anyway. </p><p>"I just can't understand," Elizabeth said, shaking her head. She paused as Aiden kindly offered her a bowl of popcorn from his chair off Teyla's other side. Considering she was dissing football, John didn't feel bad about not sharing. "You're allowed <em>one</em> personal item and you chose a football game?"</p><p>"One, I <em>know</em> you and I have already discussed <em>that part</em>," John countered, not about to admit to breaking the rules in front of Lt. Ford. He still needed the guy to follow <em>his</em> rules. "And <em>two</em>... It's a metaphor. Don't you see? This entire expedition is the biggest Hail Mary in human history."</p><p>Teyla frowned at him, her chin resting on her arm as she still held Elizabeth's hand over her shoulder. "What is a… Hail Mary?"</p><p>John pointed at the screen. "It's the play that you just saw. There was no way that play was gonna work, but those two pulled it off outta nowhere-" The explanation wasn't getting through and John floundered. He looked to Elizabeth for help because she had to know how to explain a Hail Mary, it was probably buried somewhere in her job description or something, but the woman just rolled her eyes. John was on his own.</p><p>"It's named after a prayer," he tried again, opting for a different track. "See, there was this woman, and her name was Mary, and she... Uh…"</p><p>It was suddenly very clear that he had lost her, as Teyla assumed a tolerant expression and raised an eyebrow at him. But she hadn't let go of Elizabeth, either, and now he had the both of them, and Rodney on his other side, waiting for him to stop wasting their time. It made sense to him, anyway, but he decided explaining it was going to take far too much work to make it worthwhile. John abandoned ship and smiled back at Teyla. "Did I ever tell you how much I like Ferris wheels?"</p><p>"<em>God</em>. If you haven't, it's a tale for another time," said Elizabeth. She pulled at Teyla's hand and gracefully encouraged her up off the couch like there was some kind of <em>dance</em> required to stand. "TeamTime is being interrupted for prior commitments."</p><p>"You're just sore it wasn't hockey," John grouched back at her. As she waited for Teyla to collect her things, Elizabeth ducked down to his level again, patted John on the shoulder. </p><p>"Your dad and I met at a hockey game. He was the team <em>captain</em>," she said in a thankfully quiet whisper. John made a face and tossed popcorn at her to make her leave. That was the worst possible way to ruin a sport for him, if he'd liked it much to start with. Teyla had made it around the back of the couch then and collected Elizabeth easily enough. </p><p>Aiden Ford was two beers in at that point and his eyebrows shot right up to his hairline. He waited until the doors had closed behind the women and then pointed openly.</p><p>"Is that... a <em>thing</em>?!" he blurted. John nodded sagely, grateful for the excuse to stop wondering about his hockey-player parentage.</p><p>"Oh yeah, <em>that's</em> a thing," he said. Rodney looked between them, confused. </p><p>"What?" he asked. John nudged his shoulder as a silent promise to tell him later, and Rodney accepted it, stole some popcorn from what little was left of John's stash. Ford just shook his head.</p><p>"Man… Bates is gonna be <em>so</em> pissed."</p><p>John shrugged, tossed a bit of popcorn in the air to catch it in his mouth. "Go ahead… Ask me if I care."</p><p>After a month in Atlantis, Carson nearly shorted out McKay’s brain entirely when he asked Elizabeth for permission to start testing the ATA gene therapy on volunteers. It hadn’t gone through any approval processes, there was no real peer review that could ever be done, and they were in another galaxy, so just a little outside of the jurisdiction of anybody who would shake their finger at the surgeon playing in the DNA of his coworkers. </p><p>John thought the genius had gone a little mad-crazy when Rodney signed up to be the first to try it. The guy was allergic to nearly everything and paranoid about everything else, and he was fine gambling on the gene therapy. John stayed out of it because it was a little weird how involved he already was in it; the entire thing had been based on data from, in part, his genetic code, and now backwards-engineered code-switches were being tested on other people. It was all very sci-fi and <em>very</em> weird.</p><p>Twenty-four hours later, though, Rodney was switching on his own Ancient gizmos and he only needed John for the big stuff. John considered going on strike for the hell of it if suddenly everyone was going to be able to do his job, but the gene didn’t take for everyone. Zelenka was miserable because not only did the therapy not work on him, he had to listen to Rodney gloat about it. </p><p>John had to suffer through it with him too, so he asked the city politely and managed to lock Rodney out of his own apartment in retaliation for it a couple of times. The first time, Rodney just showed up at his door and glared because he knew <em>exactly </em>why the door was malfunctioning, but John happily suggested they watch TV until Rodney’s door stopped glitching on him, and the glare dropped to a scowl as he took the publicly offered excuse to hang out in John’s place for a few hours. The second time John tried it, Rodney calmly threatened to keep him out of the Jumper bay with the manual override locks that the Atlantis computer systems didn’t control, so John cut back on the pranks after that.</p><p>Rodney still found some pretty cool stuff and some of them responded to his activated genetic-stuff. The personal shield was probably the best one of the lot, but there was only one of them. Rodney got it first, so they very carefully went through a dozen different tests, everything from John and his gene-boost trying to take the glowing device from him (it didn’t work) to trying to punch him (that hurt <em>a lot</em> and Rodney understandably found it hilarious) to throwing a wrench at him and watching it bounce off to go sliding across the floor.</p><p>Rodney considered it and then caught John’s handgun out of the holster on his thigh. John wasn’t too surprised by the man’s proximity and allowed it, eyebrows raised as Rodney handed it over to him.</p><p>“Shoot me,” he said. John hesitated, looking around the empty room they had found to experiment in. He took the gun and Rodney paced away to what he assumed was a fair target range.</p><p>“Okay, well, assuming the shield holds, bullets still bounce off-”</p><p>“<em>Ricochet</em>, for gods sake use your words, Major. They don’t <em>bounce off</em>,” McKay taunted. John squared his shoulders and thought a second time about shooting his friend. Rodney looked like he was lining up another intentional insult so John raised the gun a little, more to stall him than to seriously threaten him. It wasn’t a rifle, there weren’t any bad guys, but… it made him stop. A weapon was still a <em>weapon</em> and not the toy the scientist seemed to think it was.</p><p>“Look, don’t aim for anything vital then,” Rodney insisted. “You <em>can</em> aim, right? I just kind of assumed you were a good shot-”</p><p>At that point, it was worth it just to get him to knock it off with the rough-play insults and John scrunched his face and fired a shot at the man’s thigh. The <em>ricochet</em> went off to the left, rattled to the ground by the wall, as Rodney belatedly cowered from the shot he hadn’t been fully prepared for. John braced to get sworn at for surprising him, but instead, Rodney just stared at him, jaw slack.</p><p>“Holy crap,” he said. “I can’t believe that worked.”</p><p>“<em>What</em>?” John blurted. “You <em>told me</em> to shoot you!”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>“And you didn’t think it would <em>work</em>?”</p><p>Rodney shrugged at him. “Well, I <em>hoped </em>it would work, I <em>assumed </em>it would work, but this is the problem with science sometimes…”</p><p>John shoved the handgun back in the holster and made a point to secure it as he glared at Rodney. </p><p>“Oh, get over it. It <em>worked</em>,” Rodney told him lightly. He glanced at the door, then started walking toward John again, waving for him to meet him. John squinted at him for it, not quite trusting the geek and his quest for science after the last psych-out, but he cautiously approached. Rodney rolled his eyes at the face and caught his jacket front to tug him in for a kiss. John was good with the concept and relaxed, but he hadn’t been expecting the slight pins-and-needles, cool-electric tease against his skin and mouth at the touch. He blinked at Rodney as they pulled away. </p><p>“Did you feel that?” Rodney asked. John nodded, getting a few ideas and wondering if he could talk Rodney into any of them on the condition that they never made it into any written reports for the Science Fair back home. Rodney went suspiciously silent for a moment. John cleared his throat. </p><p>“I’m thinking we could take a lunch break at my place,” he said, striving for casual. Probably missing. Rodney didn’t seem to notice. He nodded and smoothed out John’s jacket with excessive pats.</p><p>“Yes. Good. Detour first though,” he said. “I want to try one more thing on the way.” </p><p>He grabbed his own jacket on the way out the door and John followed, curiously distracted. When Rodney said he wanted to see if he could fly, John went with it, because it couldn’t be worse than if Rodney had been wrong about the bulletproof idea. Elizabeth wasn’t impressed by it as she witnessed Rodney drop from a balcony onto the gateroom floor and spring right back up to his feet. John had been pretty certain she would have specifically grounded him if it had been an option, but it wasn’t his fault. She definitely didn’t like hearing that they had already tried <em>shooting</em> Rodney.</p><p>“Aren't you the one who's always spouting off about how proper and careful scientific procedure must be adhered to?” she wanted to know, and Rodney nodded, held his arms out.</p><p>“I’m <em>invulnerable</em>,” said Rodney, quite happy and smug about it. The point that it meant Carson’s gene therapy had definitely worked wasn’t lost on Dr. Weir. But that didn't mean she approved of their chosen field tests.</p><p>The novelty of the whole thing faded off when they found out that Rodney couldn’t take the shield off. Rodney moped around, a dead man walking, for the next day, but still kept it together when they needed him. It sucked to watch, when he was completely unable to help Rodney at all, and John hated it. Atlantis didn’t exactly give them any time to deal with it, though.</p><p>In the end, they never did get to try any of the actually <em>fun</em> ideas John had for the personal shield device because Rodney burned it out, overloaded the whole damn thing saving the city from a black cloud of an energy-monster. Every other effort they made to get the energy contained had failed, the entity somehow outsmarting them, until Rodney had waded in, using the shield for protection, and tossed the naqueda the entity was chasing right through the stargate. But the shield failed even though Rodney's quick thinking had been successful. </p><p>The unexpected heroics scared the ever living hell out of John, and maybe Elizabeth, as they ran down the stairs to where Rodney had fallen, lying passed out on the gateroom floor. He hadn't been pushed from the balcony this time. John got to him first, caught his hand as he checked for a pulse with the other. Elizabeth slid in on her knees next to him then, reached for Rodney's chest to see if he was breathing.</p><p>"Rodney?" she asked. Her hand touched the no-longer-glowing green Lantean device and it moved easily. She picked it up and moved it away from him, just in case there was some kind of negative-feedback after the device had so obviously burned up. But Rodney was breathing, his pulse was strong, John could feel it under his hand. He hung on and reached for his radio.</p><p>"Medical team to the gateroom," he ordered. Teyla and Grodin stood over them, concerned. Elizabeth tried to reassure them with a nod of her head. She still checked Rodney's shirt where the device had been, and the rest of him that she could easily see.</p><p>"He's not burned. He's breathing," Elizabeth said. Teyla set a hand on her arm then and crouched down at Rodney's shoulder. She shook him slightly, trying to get through.  </p><p>"McKay?" Elizabeth asked. She paused when Rodney opened his eyes. "McKay."</p><p>"What happened?" he asked.</p><p>"You did it," Teyla told him, the relief clear in her voice. </p><p>Rodney looked to John for confirmation. "I did?"</p><p>"The entity went through the 'gate," Elizabeth said.</p><p>"You must have passed out," added John, helping Rodney to sit up and get steady. Rodney scrunched up his nose, patted at his shoulder in thanks, took the excuse to lean in against him. </p><p>"Oh. Well, thanks for not saying the <em>other thing</em>," he said. Rodney was sensitive about fainting. Apparently it wasn't <em>manly</em>. John stayed where he was to help Rodney get his bearings while they waited for the medical team. But he looked up at Teyla and clapped a hand on Rodney's shoulder.</p><p>"<em>That</em> was a Hail Mary," he told her. Rodney let out a short, quiet laugh at that.</p><p>"And <em>I'm</em> agnostic," he said. John rolled his eyes.</p><p>"You're really gonna make Lizabeth ask the Pastor to set up religion and philosophy classes, aren't you," he complained. It was already an old, pointless argument. Rodney shrugged.</p><p>"Well, if you're going to keep confusing people with religious references-"</p><p>"Okay, <em>fine</em>, so who's gonna teach the pop culture class to keep up with <em>those </em>references?"</p><p>By then, the medical team was there and John had to back off to let them get at McKay. But Rodney was still focused on their conversation. "I thought that was what movie nights were for?"</p><p>Yeah, Rodney was gonna be fine.</p><hr/><p>Aside from spare ZPMs and a chunk of land to rely on for emergency evacuations, Atlantis needed resources. They needed food in particular, though other supplies like bedding and regular wares would be welcome, if they could find them, and if they could trade for them. Without any currency, or even knowing if there was the possibility of a common currency between planets to begin with, trade was their only real option. That contingency had been planned for, to an extent, and Elizabeth had made sure the expedition was stocked with generic goods to offer as a starting-off point. No one back on Earth had the first clue what might be seen as valuable in another galaxy and their trade stock was mostly boxes of baubles and blankets and cultural interest items that weren’t intended for personnel-use. But it was something.</p><p>That meant finding people to trade with. Teyla knew the addresses of trading partners that the Athosians had relied on, communities she expected would still offer the same courtesy of aid now that her people were on Atlantis, though she wasn’t sure how a team of aliens would be received in every place. It was still best to introduce these potential allies to the people from Earth, so they needed a contact-team. </p><p>Because of the potential usefulness of the ATA, Carbon Pilot was tagged in for leading a contact team, and Elizabeth let him set up his own crew. John kept the Atlantis Reconnaissance team small until he “had a feel for the place” and after just three weeks on Atlantis, they started weekly explorations to see what they could find. </p><p>They started with Teyla’s known resources and were somewhat successful, at least in making contact, letting John and Teyla convince people that Atlantis was friendly and looking to establish itself as an ally. They brought back bushels of vegetables that added a little color to the MRE supply again and, of all things, a goat-like beast that Teyla assured Elizabeth the Athosians would make sure was tended to for the benefit of everyone in the city. She proved it a few days later by surprising Elizabeth with a wonderful tea that had been perfectly blended with milk. Maybe they didn’t have a full stock for everyone yet, but the Athosians were able to return to some of their preferred meals off the trickle of supplies. It helped ease up on the demand across the city, as well as their stress as they reclaimed a small piece of normal.</p><p>Every second gate address they tried, however, was random. An unknown that they pulled from the Ancients’ database of addresses rather than Teyla’s memory. They were true explorations and they didn’t know what they were walking into at all. John took larger teams for those planets, his own team plus four of the marines. Elizabeth trusted Teyla’s judgment on her contacts and didn’t worry too much about the four-man AR-1 heading out on their own, but the Marines went along on the others at her direct request. John had rolled his eyes at her nosing into his territory, but he hadn’t argued. </p><p>The first effort had gone alright, with an invitation to come back later and establish a regular contact, to work toward trade as a proven, friendly community. But at the second database address they ran into trouble. Grumpy natives that didn’t like the offer of trade and were somehow offended by having been asked. That didn’t go so well, earning John a solid black eye, and one of the Marines came back with a knife wound to the arm, and the whole thing was topped off by a run from the Wraith, apparently. </p><p>It wasn’t ideal but it wasn’t wholly surprising, either, if Elizabeth were honest with herself. Earth’s own history and certainly the SGC’s experience in the Milky Way had proven clearly enough that exploration didn’t always turn up friendlies. They had planned accordingly because they had expected it, but it was still disheartening as their food supplies dwindled. They were far from starving, even with the extra people, but marking an unfriendly planet off their list of potential resources was still a blow.</p><p>Worse than the wasted time on sour humans, however, were the close calls with the Wraith on every other planet. They had nearly lost one of the marines on that second planet, at a time when Elizabeth didn’t see how they could have possibly risked a rescue mission. Thankfully everyone had come back, though they were spooked and muddy and run ragged. It was as though the Wraith were on every planet in the Ancients’ database, and that didn’t make sense. It bothered Elizabeth, and not just for the reports that AR-1 had run from multiple potentially friendly communities to dodge the Dart beams. </p><p>On their third off-world trip to an address from the database, John had spent hours with a local leader, had won him over to helping them, and the team had been stacking up the freely gifted supplies when the stargate started dialing on its own and the Darts flew through. AR-1 and the marines had gone to ground near the stargate, were stuck there for hours because it wasn’t safe to move, let alone to dial out. </p><p>When they went back to try to assist the small village, it had been culled. John reported nothing was left behind but burning huts and scared animals. They had brought some of the animals back, and Teyla had found a group of children in a barn that were suddenly without family. The Athosians adopted them. That had been a very long day for everyone, on both sides of the stargate, and it changed the tone of the team when they met up to go off-world to an unknown address after that. </p><p>Watching the teams come back hassled and bruised was harder than Elizabeth had expected it would be. They hadn’t come to Pegasus to create and collect orphans, certainly, but more than that, Elizabeth hadn’t expected to be giving weekly orders to walk members of her expedition out into danger. They took every precaution, but everyone who left the safety of Atlantis’ shields ultimately came back injured at some point. That included Teyla, Rodney, and John, each returning to visit with Carson before making a report to fill Elizabeth in on what had gone wrong. Despite what Elizabeth had once told John, she found herself very gradually prioritizing the health and safety of her favorite people on the expedition, because over the weeks on Atlantis, she discovered that she had favorites she was suddenly faced with losing. </p><p>As the person responsible for hundreds of lives, it was a problem. Very much Elizabeth’s problem, but a problem nonetheless. After months of getting along, even getting to the point where they could peacefully enjoy each other’s company in a professional capacity, John seemed to recognize the signs of trouble before she did. </p><p>Their seventh off-world trip hadn’t gone exactly as bad as their sixth, but it had been to one of the addresses provided by Teyla’s people, and the medical team had <em>still </em>been called into the Jumper bay to meet them on their return. Elizabeth stood on the observation deck to watch the Jumper show up and stayed there until she saw Carson’s team retreat back to the infirmary. When they returned, Aiden Ford was on the stretcher and he looked very still; Elizabeth wasn’t going to add to the crowd in the medical bay and she went back to her desk to glare at a supply list on her desk instead. John saw his team to the infirmary and then marched up to Elizabeth’s office.</p><p>“I’m fine,” he told her as he walked in, hands up enough to prove it. “Rodney’s fine, Teyla’s fine.”</p><p>“Then what happened to the Lieutenant?” Elizabeth asked, looking up at him sharply. </p><p>“An accident. That’s all. It was a stupid accident,” said John. He stood in front of her desk, looking down at her, and Elizabeth crossed her arms as she waited for an explanation. Satisfied that she was listening even if she was pissed off, John continued. “There was this rocky hill area and we had to climb down. It gave out under him and he slid. He’s all bruises and he hit his head and maybe twisted his ankle. We couldn’t tell. <em>That’s </em>why I called to have medical meet us.”</p><p>“You weren’t even gone an hour,” Elizabeth pointed out.</p><p>“We didn’t even make it fifty yards from the Jumper! I parked in the wrong spot, Elizabeth. This one’s on me,” said the Major. </p><p>“The entire point behind taking the Jumper is to get around the more dangerous terrain, John,” said Elizabeth. </p><p>“It’s not like I took it on a joyride, Doc,” John replied. “Accidents <em>happen</em>. We’re on another damn planet-”</p><p>“That’s exactly my issue with this,” replied Elizabeth. “You’re out there, on your own, and we don’t know to get you help until you can get back to the gate-”</p><p>The Major met her anger with an attitude of his own. “That’s how this works! That’s what you had with SG-1, you told me that yourself.”</p><p>"Yes, and it can't be your team doing it," Elizabeth said. The words were out, a made decision, before she even realized she had made it. She stared at him, the both of them surprised by it, and then nodded as she resolved to stand by the call. "We'll… spend more time on reconnaissance, and send a secondary team out first, as a scout."</p><p>"Don't start this bullshit again," John shot back. He waved out at the stargate beyond her office window. "No amount of reconnaissance is gonna tell us how it's gonna go out there. I can get maps from the Jumper, we don't need to send <em>scouts</em>. This was an <em>accident</em>, and this is what we have to do. We need food, we need ZPMs, we need-"</p><p>"We need the people most equipped to handle Atlantis when things go wrong to not be risking their lives over vegetables," Elizabeth argued.</p><p>"No! We need you to remember there's three hundred other people in this city who aren't <em>me</em>," John cut in. "People who still have no other place to go. Because nothing is safe out there, and, fact is that we can't plan on these shields saving us from that forever."</p><p>Safe and stubborn behind her desk, Elizabeth shook her head. "It's not just you. There's significant risks with Rodney-"</p><p>John crossed his arms but he didn't look like a belligerent child when he did it.</p><p> "You can't just send marines out without a science geek along to let them know if the air's safe or not. So far, Rodney's the best at thinking on his feet, even out there," John argued. "And you sure as hell can't send Bates out to deal with the locals because he doesn't like the locals we've already got. And Teyla's our only source of intel about anything out here. Unless you wanna ask Halling to leave <em>his</em> kids behind again, in which case, good luck. <em>This</em> is my team, Elizabeth, and we'll figure this out."</p><p>Even if the man made logical sense, Elizabeth didn't like it. She set her jaw, her lips a grim line as she glared at John for being stubborn. It was her own fault, she had let him set his own rules from the start, and this was no different. It was her command and he knew that as well as anybody, and he was determined to disregard the orders he didn't agree with. Even the ones primarily concerned with keeping him alive. Or rather, especially those orders.</p><p>"Off-world missions are paused until we have something more workable than this," Elizabeth said, her tone firm and quiet.</p><p>"How about you back off and remember where your priorities are supposed to be, instead," John replied. "There's not a piece of proof between here and the Milky Way that says you get to ground Carbon Pilot because you're afraid your kid's gonna get hurt. But you got this gig because you promised the IOA and the SGC and a dozen other government alphabets that you were going to be responsible for the lives of <em>everyone</em> on the expedition. Including getting them food. And supplies. And finding a goddamn alpha site for safe evacuations. Which I can't make happen if you're gonna pull this shit when things get tight."</p><p>"You're not the only one who can fly the Jumpers anymore. Other teams can step up," Elizabeth reminded him. She leaned forward, elbows on the desk as she looked up at him soberly. "And no one else on the expedition would stand in my office and dare do what you're doing now, Major. So don't pretend I am out of line with my judgment calls when you are relying on the exact same reasoning for your own. I want new off-world protocols, I want options, and I want them by next week. In the meantime, AR-1 is grounded while Lt. Ford recovers fully. The stargate stays closed. Are my orders clear?"</p><p>The anger on the man's face faded briefly to surprise, as though he hadn't realized he really had stood there arguing with his mother like she had told him he couldn't take the car on a weeknight. He definitely hadn't relied on their well-practiced professional masks and the usual <em>yes</em> or <em>no ma'am</em> replies. John took advantage of the family tie as it suited him, so in Elizabeth's opinion, he could just deal with the stuff he didn't like about it, too.</p><p>He left her office without another word and she didn't see him again for another day. When she stopped by to check on Aiden Ford, the young lieutenant was awake and looking rough, but he wouldn't be staying there long. He immediately started to apologize for grounding the team and Elizabeth had to correct that assumption.</p><p>"This is not anybody's fault. If anything, it's proof we got out ahead of ourselves. Things need planned for, as much as we're able, and certainly, more care needs to be shown for the fact that it's dangerous," she told him. Elizabeth wanted some measure of control over something that couldn't be controlled, and she knew that, but they could certainly pause and look for another way to do things. "Everything is new here, so when something isn't working, there's no reason not to try different ideas if any seem viable."</p><p>"Yeah, that's what the Major said, too," said Aiden. "But it still… feels weird, since I'm the one who fell and everything."</p><p>Elizabeth offered him a smile. "Carson says you'll be fine, he's just monitoring the concussion. It was an accident. We're just looking into options to help minimize the trouble we can. By the time these scrapes clear up, the Major and I will have settled on a new plan. It's just another change to keep up with."</p><p>"Like everything else around here," Aiden said, and he seemed amused. The kid was quick to catch on and his boss nodded to encourage him.</p><p>She wasn't far off in her timeline guess, either. Aiden was bruise-free by the time John finally marched back into her office.</p><p>"You have an email," he informed her in lieu of any polite greeting. It was probably the most words he had spoken to her in a week. Elizabeth nodded once but hardly looked up from the email she was reading.</p><p>"I see that."</p><p>John dropped into the chair across the desk from her. "If we weren't conserving paper, I would have printed it just to throw it at you properly."</p><p>"I respect your self restraint," Elizabeth replied dryly. "Tablets are heavier and you would likely damage it if you tried the same trick there."</p><p>It worked to crack the man's mood a little, but he still waited as she read over the off-world risk assessment report and his suggestions for changes. There were various options, and AR-1 placed mostly the same in all of them, aside from one John probably included only to show he was paying attention in class.</p><p> The one that seemed closest to middle ground was to replace the cumbersome project of the MALP with a smaller, simple drone scout, and where viable, they then send the Jumpers through. With AR-1 aboard, of course. They could then cloak the Jumpers and investigate the area from above, completely unseen, and if there were to be trouble, they would have the Jumper to get them home faster and shielded. <em>Cautious</em> exploration. With the capacity for large or small teams, and even heavy weapons and invisible shields for defense. No more walking in entirely blind and hoping for the best.</p><p>"I want an absolute minimum of two pilots on each of these teams," Elizabeth said. "Which means you teach Rodney to fly, or AR-1 gets a new ATA carrier."</p><p>"I'll teach Rodney," John grumped at her, chin on his chest as he slouched in his chair.</p><p>"And where it's available, on larger teams, I would prefer a pilot remain with the ship-"</p><p>"I <em>won't</em> sit at the ship, Lizabeth," John cut in. She raised an eyebrow at him. </p><p>"I didn't specify, and for the record, that's not a terrible idea," she replied. "But no, I still would prefer you as our front-man with new locals, with Teyla."</p><p>"Okay," said John, nodding reluctant agreement with the fact that they agreed on something to begin with. "That I can do."</p><p>"And I like this point about leaving the gate open for communication and data transmission during the scouting phase. We can collect a lot of very useful data that way, and as a bonus, should you meet any surprises, we're aware of it early, as well as have a last known location to start from," Elizabeth went on. She set the tablet down and leaned her elbows on the desk as she looked over at John squarely. "Thank you. I'll have the new protocol outlined by the end of the day and AR-1 can resume normal exploration any time after tomorrow."</p><p>John sat up, a little more like a respectable adult and less like a man very comfortable making his passive-aggressive disagreements known in present company. "About that. Next trip, I want to go check out that Wraith hive. Just do some recon and intel gathering.  See if we can get a read on why they keep showing up."</p><p>Elizabeth didn't like that at all. But he had a valid reason for the risk. And she had just read through a fairly comprehensive general risk assessment as proof that the young Major was aware and cognizant of the dangers he was walking valuable teammates into, of the risk that posed to the expedition. There was no reason to suspect John was just firing back at her for having demanded the report in the first place. They needed more information about the Wraith that had woken up, that seemed to be dogging their team. Elizabeth finally offered a nod.</p><p>"Sounds good. Schedule a team. I'll have the new protocols to you in two hours," she said. John seemed surprised by the easy approval, but he smiled and jumped up to get on the order. </p><p>"John," Elizabeth said, catching him at the door. He looked back. "I expect you to actually read them when you get them. <em>And </em>follow them."</p><p>The Major smirked and shrugged. "Of course, Doc."</p><hr/>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They weren't snake-aliens. They were bugs. And, no pun intended, they <em>sucked</em>. At least John was alive to owe McKay another five bucks. After the close-call in the back of the Jumper, John probably owed him more like fifteen. If he was counting, that was the third time Rodney had saved his ass from an alien since they had gotten to Atlantis almost three months earlier.</p><p>Teyla and Ford and Carson had all pitched in this time. Maybe Teyla knew a planet that specialized in trading gift baskets, because he owed them one. They got him from a Wraith-infested planet and a broken Jumper back to Atlantis and an infirmary bed. It was a definite improvement.</p><p>The catering in the infirmary left much to be desired though. An IV keeping him hydrated and alive between meals wasn't the same as a steak. Not that Atlantis had any of <em>that</em> left, but John would have killed the cow himself for it.</p><p>"You're worse than my sister's cat. Ye just ate an hour ago, I think another hour won't hurt," chided Dr. Beckett.</p><p>"Hey, if we've got tuna or something, I'll take the cat food," John replied. "I'm still hungry."</p><p>"Give yourself a chance to recover, man. You were <em>dead </em>five hours ago. Wee baby steps," Carson said, and that was the doctor's orders.</p><p>"But I thought there was something about how you need to eat a lot of red meat after a lot of blood loss..."</p><p>"You're human, not a vampire. Ye won't starve," Carson assured him. John gave up and sagged back against the pillows to wait for dinner.</p><p>“Just for the record, this is a whole new galaxy, so we don’t know that for a fact yet,” John called after him as the doctor abandoned his patient to starvation and boredom.</p><p>“Don’t say that, man. I’m gonna have enough nightmares after the last few weeks as it is,” came Aiden Ford’s voice. John looked back toward the hall and saw the Lieutenant walking in the room.</p><p>“No kidding,” John agreed, but he smiled at the prospect of company at least. He wasn’t feeling all that terrible for a formerly-dead guy, aside from the residual pain in the neck and exhaustion, and the annoyance of not being able to move half his body. Carson had already chased Rodney out twice because his medical opinion was that John needed rest more than social noise, so either Ford had snuck in past the nurse or John had worn the doc down. The lieutenant was still in his uniform and John frowned at the dirty mess as Ford jumped on the bed across from his. He motioned toward it.</p><p>“Why the hell are you still on duty?” he asked.</p><p>“Oh, Teyla made us take her back to Athos. They have some kinda magic cure for your bug bites,” the man replied, like John’s neck had been torn up by mosquitoes or something.</p><p>“Well, I’m glad you guys had fun,” he said, not at all at ease by the excuse. “Did everyone come back in one piece?”</p><p>“Yep. The darts didn’t show up this time,” Ford said. John squinted at that, dismissing the news while at least being glad to hear it.</p><p>“That’s a statistical outlier. We’re not letting them go back yet,” he said, just to make that clear. Ford shook his head in quick agreement.</p><p>Teyla showed up not long later, accompanied by Carson. The man looked rather stressed in the face of a very determined Teyla. He carried a clay pot, giving the overall impression of Winnie the Pooh with his hunny jars. Teyla stepped around him to check on John herself.</p><p>"You have strange rules regarding your health," Teyla informed him, very much judging somebody, though John was not yet certain if it was him specifically or a more general 'you' at the heart of it. "I asked how you were and Dr. Beckett would not tell me. So I'm hoping you are more informative."</p><p>"Depends on who's asking," John said, shrugging one shoulder. The other one was still not exactly cooperative. "The only official report so far is I'm not a vampire, and I'm still hungry."</p><p>"Hmm, raise your right hand to your nose, then we'll talk about ye feedin' yourself more," said Carson. Teyla frowned at him and then John.</p><p>"Okay, so, still can't exactly move everything, but the doc says it will clear up," John said. He lifted his left hand. "This one is good though."</p><p>Teyla looked to Carson and the big ceramic jar he carried. "We brought this back from Athos for your injuries."</p><p>"Aye, but there's no telling what's in it, Major. Your system is taxed as it is. What the Athosians grew up with could be like poison to you or I if we were to be allergic," Carson pointed out. So John asked what was in it, not missing the doctor's point, but curious. Teyla rattled off a dozen ingredients, not a single one of which John had any clue what they were, let alone if he might be allergic. She said they had used the recipe for generations and it was perfectly safe, a natural anti-inflammatory that also helped to neutralize various venoms of local pests and monsters. John was willing to give it a shot, but he hesitated.</p><p>"What did Rodney say about it?"</p><p>"He asked Elizabeth to authorize the trip to retrieve it," said Teyla.</p><p>"<em>And</em> he handled the Jumper," added Ford. "We were in and out. Easy."</p><p>Teyla nodded to back up the lieutenant. She took the jar from Carson and removed the lid to hold it close enough for John to smell. "I just came from where they are, and Elizabeth did not have any reaction to it when I asked her to try it first."</p><p>Maybe John was a little loopy from the day in general, but if Rodney was willing to give it a shot… It dawned on him then that Teyla had tried the stuff on Elizabeth before bringing it to him.</p><p>"Hey, wait- she <em>told </em>you?" he asked, completely forgetting Ford and Carson. Teyla smiled lightly, one corner of her lips up higher than the other and completely smug.</p><p>"She hopes you try it. Because I assured her it would work, as I told you," Teyla said, very much not answering his question.</p><p>"Okay, okay, I'll try it," John said. He wasn't expecting it, but probably should have, when Teyla started bossing Carson into helping her apply the cream. It became a <em>process,</em> with ritual prayer and everything, and John felt like an idiot, but he still couldn't feel most of his neck and shoulder and arm so there was no way around letting people help him. McKay showed up in time to gawk at the wound before Carson taped it up under another bandage.</p><p>"That… is gross," Rodney commented, making a very disgusted face at him from the foot of the bed. John tried to kick him but his legs weren't exactly listening to him yet.</p><p>"Thanks, McKay," was all he could do, and the man gave him a thumbs up for it. He leaned a hip into the bed though and up against John's foot, which was as much sharing of space as would be allowed until John was let out of the infirmary.</p><p>In the end, Teyla was right, and the cream did help, whatever was in it. John started to get sleepy instead of hungry, too, which Carson seemed to approve of. His team happily ignored Carson's hint that they let him rest, and Teyla pulled up a chair like she intended to camp out as she started in on stories of other animals they were going to need to be careful of, on her planet and others. The good Dr. Beckett took in the scene with a sigh before leaving the room, not about to encourage them by staying to socialize.</p><p>It wasn't long before Elizabeth showed up, looking tired and pale, but smiling.</p><p>"How are you feeling?" she asked, standing off the corner of the bed, between the two people John was starting to suspect were her helpful spies.</p><p>"Starving," John said.</p><p>"He's got quite the hickey, but Dr. Beckett says he'll be fine in a few days," offered Rodney. That only made Elizabeth duck her head to hide an amused grin. The woman <em>knew </em>things, damn it.</p><p>"We should let you rest, then," Elizabeth concluded from the report. Ford seemed to take Elizabeth's comment as an unofficial order and dropped down from the bed nearby.</p><p>"No," John said, correcting that quickly, "You should get me <em>food</em>."</p><p>Elizabeth nodded agreeably. "I think we can arrange that. I believe the mess is still open. Lieutenant, if you would?"</p><p>When the Director looked over at Ford, the Lieutenant smiled and nodded. Why the hell hadn't <em>John </em>thought of that a half an hour ago, damn it. Ford glanced back at him as he snuck off to follow orders. "Good to have you back, sir."</p><p>"I have to admit, that part is a pleasant surprise," the patient replied. He watched the Lieutenant actually leave the room to go off and find him food, fully confident that Ford would actually heed Elizabeth’s request and that he wasn’t just jerking John’s chain about the promise of more food. Maybe it was the stuff in the Athosian bug-bite cure-all, but John was suddenly feeling a little spoiled, with three people hanging out to keep him company, and the lieutenant sneaking off to disobey the doctor's orders for him.</p><p>Rodney went to grab another chair and dropped into it on the other side of the bed, leaving John pinging between, one side to the other, as he and Elizabeth explained what had been found with the Jumper. It was fixable, but Zelenka and Rodney would be arguing about the right way to do it for at least a month. Jumper One was a good little ship, but John figured he should plan on it being retired from active duty. He relaxed and tried to believe Rodney's promise that the ship would be back to good in a month, two tops, and didn't point out that the Ops team had important work to keep them busy around the whole city, not just the Jumper bay.</p><p>"Moral of the story is, next time I get bit by a damn bug, I'm still flying the Jumper home myself. Someone's just gotta prop me up in the chair, I'll get the rest," John decided.</p><p>"Uh, no, that- there was <em>nowhere</em> in that story <em>any</em> moral anything like that," Rodney replied. John swept his hand - the one that <em>was</em> still listening to him - in Rodney's general direction to dismiss his argument. Matching smiles seemed to indicate that Teyla and Elizabeth were amused.</p><p>"By the way, what was it you were going to say?" Elizabeth asked.</p><p>John blinked at her. "When?"</p><p>"Before, when you thought, you know…"</p><p>Oh, that. That amorphous <em>thing </em>he almost said over the open radio comm because he was absolutely certain he was about to die. Very painfully, when he was more than a little scared, and he remembered he had very badly wanted a hug to hide in at the time. He still did, but the best he had was Teyla's hand over his wrist, and he could only barely <em>feel</em> that.</p><p>"I didn't want you to say goodbye," Elizabeth admitted. "I'd just had that same argument with Halling. But now I'm curious."</p><p>He had <em>tried</em> to, though he hadn't been very successful at it. John had wanted to say goodbye. Ford and Teyla would get over it, he knew. He was just their team lead, and they were friends, but the galaxy was bigger than that and they wouldn't miss him long. It had been very real to John that he could say what he needed to with Rodney there, with him in the Jumper, because he knew him. The team there with him then didn't have to say so much; they would be good. There were no missed chances with them. But it was different when it came to that radio call. John couldn't get it into words, still, hours later.</p><p>"I was going to say," John began, mentally scrambling to make something up. He was cozy just then so he settled on the easy answer. "Take care of each other."</p><p>If the smug grin on McKay's face was any indication at all, nobody bought it.</p><p>"That's nice," said Elizabeth, politely.</p><p>"Yep," replied John. The long quiet stretched on, and Rodney's face said he really wanted to call <em>bullshit</em> but he was mindful of who else was in the room with them. So the quiet just got quieter and louder.</p><p>"You weren't really going to say that, were you?" Elizabeth asked.</p><p>Over in his chair, hunkered over his knees as an excuse to be closer, Rodney looked down at the floor and just barely peeked up at him. He had been right there with John, the both of them stuck in the big metal log of a spaceship. John had put a lot of effort into trying to stand up, arguments with a body that wouldn't listen to him at all, just so he could have helped Rodney with the ship, like they had worked on a dozen other things since they had met. He hadn't been worried about saying goodbye to Rodney because he was half-certain they would be going out together.</p><p>And, in the infirmary, hours later, Rodney didn't seem to have expected it of him, either. There was a look on his face that was more of a challenge, more gloating that John got <em>called out</em>, and less of the curiosity that would have been there if the man thought the answer had anything at all to do with him. Because they were both mentally somewhere around the age of twelve, John stuck his tongue out at him, only to have Rodney return the effort, even crossing his eyes to one-up him at it.</p><p>"<em>That</em> certainly answers my question," Elizabeth observed as Teyla laughed at them. John was glad for the sound of that and he looked over at the pair. Their two communities had been in Atlantis for a month. The entire time, their partnership was open and honest, with Teyla's people and with the expedition, and the two seemed to complement each other well. Bates didn't like it, said it compromised the expedition director, because "goddamn <em>aliens</em>," and Elizabeth and everyone else, really, seemed to ignore the Sgt. and his bigotry. But it also gave John a whole different view of Elizabeth through these other people- through Rodney, through the other members of their team, and through Teyla.</p><p>It turned out that the woman wasn't actually the monster he'd spent half his life imagining her as.</p><p>And John had been stuck in that Jumper with these other people, his friends, his team, and all he had of Elizabeth was on the radio. It was oddly reversed from when he lost Leila; back then, she was the one dying on the other end of the telephone line. And John was in LA, a lot closer to home than another galaxy. He hadn't known then that he should have said goodbye on that call to his mom's hospital room, but sitting in that Jumper, bleeding and trapped and dying in incremental seconds, John was positive he was wasting the only time he had by not saying something to Elizabeth.</p><p>He didn't know her as well as everyone else did, he had thirty years of missed <em>everything</em>, and he had felt absolutely certain that he needed to say goodbye, so nobody walked away alone. It was a family thing; he had found one, and he didn't know what to do about being the one to have to leave it. That was his problem, and he had been a little too messed up to see around it, until Elizabeth told him he had to. That <em>goodbye</em> wasn't an option this time.</p><p>"You know how I said it sucked that you're making calls and I can't tell if it's because of the job or because of me? And I said leave me out of it, just do your job?" John finally asked. Elizabeth nodded.</p><p>"Maybe I lied. And maybe… if your kid is doing something stupid and needs to hear about it… maybe you're okay telling me that," he managed. He looked up at her, a little afraid of seeing if any of his rambled apology and request even made sense to her. "And maybe not just the stupid things. The other stuff too. Would be cool."</p><p>John was a full-grown adult, damn it. He didn't exactly know how to say he wanted his mom after spending four months making it very clear he'd already had one and didn't need a replacement. But he had sort of figured out that this wasn't the same thing at all.</p><p>Elizabeth seemed stuck for a moment, wavering and looking unsteady. It was enough to concern Teyla, who reached out and took her hand, tugged her gently close enough where she could wrap her arms around and encourage her to sit. Elizabeth seemed to wake up to the fact that she had just been pulled into a lap and it shook her out of it. She even smiled, glancing back at Teyla before meeting John's eye again, suddenly much closer than eight feet away, with neither of them looking down on the other. Eye to eye, for once, and John stuck being honest about it.</p><p>Elizabeth reached forward and caught his hand under hers, and John managed to get his thumb to cooperate enough to hang on. It was weird how tiny she was. But John had outgrown Leila Sheppard by the time he was ten years old, too.</p><p>"Sounds good," she said, quiet but almost smiling. "So don't walk into any more bug nests, alright?"</p><p>Like <em>that</em> wasn't a tall order. He hadn't exactly <em>planned</em> on running into the one he had found as it was. He managed to contain the eye roll, though.</p><p>“Look, I’ll work on it,” he said. “But we already <em>know </em>I’m gonna do dumb shit. Let’s... manage expectations, here.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The next few days were an incredible lesson in patience and resolve for Elizabeth. She stayed in the infirmary to donate blood because, as it happened, she was a match for the Major, and he had lost quite a bit to the bug. But she didn't visit with him long when that was done.</p><p>She was determined not to hover over him, even if he had given her tacit permission to do so. Neither of them were used to the idea of it, and she wasn't going to push it. She was hardwired for negotiation, practical politics, which was very different. As he had reminded her indirectly, many times, mothering was not her first instinct, and it wasn't fair to practice with it when the adult-child was still half-paralyzed and in pain; he couldn't run away and she wouldn't risk cornering him. But he did reach for her hand a few times, and John was always the first to let go, a good signal that his quiet mood had passed and she was just the boss again.</p><p>The logic behind their distance was lost on Teyla entirely. The difference was, however, that Teyla was a natural at what evaded Elizabeth. So with Elizabeth unwilling to test boundaries, as a member of John's team, as their friend, she stayed with John when Elizabeth was afraid to. And when she left him, she went to Elizabeth. The first time Teyla traded off her babysitting chores, everything seemed fine. Elizabeth nodded along to the report on John's status, made it all the way to the end… and then all but crumpled up to cry.</p><p>"He's alright, Elizabeth. Did you not hear me?" Teyla asked, her voice soft as she stepped closer. She knelt in front of Elizabeth's chair and tugged on her knee to spin her away from the desk. She couldn't keep hiding her face in her palms without the desktop's easy support and Elizabeth let Teyla fold their hands together instead. Looking her in the eye was another problem entirely, and Elizabeth didn't quite manage it. She shook her head instead, tried to pull in a full breath.</p><p>"That's not it. It's this… whole thing. I'll say it, Teyla, I was <em>scared</em>. You were both on that ship today, and John… there's so much I missed, I'll never get any of it back, but… I at least want to, I don't know, make up for it, going forward? And I can't do that if he's gone already, and there's been so many close calls just since we got here-"</p><p>Teyla let her ramble, shushing only to remind her to keep breathing rather than choke. She leaned on her legs, a physical presence as well as a concerned face, and held on to Elizabeth's hands, brushed a kiss to her knuckles to reassure or distract, she wasn't sure which.</p><p>"Yes, it is dangerous here," Teyla said. "But it was also dangerous before. And now he is healing. He is not gone, he's at <em>most</em> very bored of the infirmary."</p><p>The effort at a smile didn't quite stick and Elizabeth clung to the hands keeping her grounded. "That's what bothers me. It's my <em>job</em> to put him there, <em>my</em> responsibility to everyone in this city, to send <em>him</em> out to come back hurt. And… every time it happens, there's these moments - I'm just a scared kid all over again, stuck in my head, remembering when I lost-"</p><p>"Those are memories, <em>imare</em>. Part of you, yes, but not the part that controls you. And you have done well, you have made every choice you needed to for your people, and mine, even still," said Teyla. "And I assure you, John has not been somehow sacrificed under your orders. To be quite honest, he is terrible at actually following orders, as I have noticed. He is good at… finding loopholes. He makes his own decisions, impulsive though they may be… they work. You are dealing with a capable adult, Elizabeth. No longer the baby you lost."</p><p>"<em>Precisely</em>. And it gets in my head to protect<em> the child</em>, these random, terrifying memories just trigger it, and I can't. I'm thirty years too late, and it's in the way," Elizabeth replied.</p><p>"Perhaps the difference is that you are not too late," said Teyla. She leaned into Elizabeth enough to push herself to her feet, then encouraged her out of her chair to pull her into a proper hug. Elizabeth allowed it, grateful to tuck in and be protected from the world for a moment.</p><p>"I am, though," she said. Teyla shook her head but let Elizabeth hide.</p><p>"No, you are <em>here</em>, now, imare. And the little boy you lost, who was taken from you, has had the chance to find his own way. Has become his own soul, has grown on his own to be a leader and protector," Teyla reminded her, in her usual careful but no-nonsense way. "And it is significant, I think, that this strong soul still found his way back to your life. The memories exist, but they lie. You are not late, you did not fail at something beyond your control… this separate journey you were on allowed you to be where you could be found."</p><p>That was certainly one way of looking at it. One that Elizabeth hadn't considered. She curled more snug against Teyla, still needing the shield but all the more in awe of the other woman's presence in her life. She had a wealth of experience and knowledge and grace, that came from living, less from learning and negotiating like Elizabeth's had for so long. Where Elizabeth had gotten where she was by turning theory into practice, Teyla Emmagan simply moved into a new situation with her eyes and ears open, and handled things as she needed to. And, it turned out, sometimes what had to be handled was Elizabeth, and she did that as well as anything else. Teyla soothed her hands over her back, tucked her cheek to hers, and let Elizabeth process how she needed to.</p><p>"I see it is hard on you," Teyla went on, quieter. "And all I can offer is that you may be the man's mother without expecting yourself to protect him from those things he is capable of handling for himself. He <em>asked</em> for you, as his mother. Neither of you are children anymore. You may be family and still protect yourselves."</p><p>They stood there, in Elizabeth's office, for another long minute as Elizabeth allowed the perspective to calm her. She finally took a deep breath and nodded, pulled back enough to rest her forehead to Teyla's, caught her face between her hands to still hold that connection.</p><p>"Thank you," she said. Teyla's concerned expression traded off for a smile.</p><p>"Of course," she said, and Elizabeth kissed her before she could say anything more.</p><p>With that personal crisis averted, Elizabeth was settled for another few hours, and even managed to sleep that night. She was lighter when she ventured to the infirmary the next morning to check on John. She visited, made sure he was doing better, and then still made a polite retreat when she started to feel like she was overstaying her welcome. A few hours later, she hinted at Rodney that he should take a lunch break and sneak food in for John while he was at it. Teyla showed up not long later to brow-beat her for sending Rodney in her place, but Elizabeth feigned innocence.</p><p>“If he’s following orders from me, Carson won’t argue him about it,” she pointed out. “And no one else will, either.”</p><p>“Why would they?” Teyla asked. Elizabeth scrunched her nose up at the distasteful topic she had accidentally opened up.</p><p>“The military, where we’re from, is backwards-thinking on a lot of things,” she said, speaking very carefully and as diplomatically as possible considering she was not far from answering to those backwards minds herself. “And rumors of breaking their backward rules can hurt the Major’s position and career. John can spend time with his team, and, should he find a woman who isn’t a member of his team or under his command, he could spend time with her. But with John’s record already in question by some of the military personnel on this expedition, were any of them to decide he and Rodney directly spent too much time together… it could lead to problems none of us want.”</p><p>Teyla frowned at her. “When you say problems, do you mean risk of physical harm? I’ve heard from Rodney the concern that some members of the military attachment would prevent John’s return from missions-”</p><p>“If Col. Sumner were still around, I would be more worried about that,” Elizabeth admitted. “And I can’t say it’s out of the realm of possibility. Many people in our culture are… let’s say, closed-minded on the issue of who can spend time with whom. Two men together is a dangerous rumor.”</p><p>“Together, as partners, as we are?” Teyla asked, and it was clear that the suggestion concerned her, even angered her. “And are they?”</p><p>“I honestly don’t know the answer to that. I can say that it would not surprise me, but you would know them better than I would. I just don’t want the rumors to start because Rodney’s nervous about John’s extended time in the infirmary,” replied Elizabeth. And the man was. Elizabeth had a half-dozen emails from Rodney in the twenty-four hours John had been stuck in Carson’s care; he couldn’t ask Carson and John was terrible about replying to emails, especially when he was mostly sleeping off the toxins left over in his system. Teyla processed the information a moment, nodding acceptance of it without seeming to settle down about it.</p><p>“And what then about you and I? Are <em>you </em>at risk of harm from those who think this way?” she asked. Elizabeth frowned and nodded.</p><p>“If I weren’t the Director of the expedition, perhaps,” she said. She shrugged it off. “But I’ve been open with my crew about us for this very reason. Being quiet means people think there’s something to be hidden, something to be ashamed of, and I would rather be a galaxy away from those attitudes. I think that’s the opposite of what this expedition stands for, so I will not encourage it. I’ve dealt with it enough in my life, I think… I think out here I have a chance to change that.”</p><p>There was a slight smile on Teyla’s lips, but she still didn’t seem to approve. “I suspect, then, this is part of the reason why Sgt. Bates dislikes me.”</p><p>“Bates… dislikes the mission, I think,” Elizabeth replied. “Since the Colonel’s death, he’s been nothing but argumentative about everything. He particularly has problems with John. I haven’t helped. And I think he takes a lot of that out on you. So it’s part of it. But I would wager not all of it.”</p><p>Teyla stood up from where she leaned on the desk beside Elizabeth's chair and it felt like a loss. Rather than accept that, Elizabeth caught her hand to pull her close and wrapped an arm around her waist to tug her into her lap, just as Teyla had done to her the day before, and many times over the last month. Admittedly, she was stronger, and much more graceful about it, but she was smiling as she folded down into Elizabeth's arms.</p><p>"I must admit, there are many things I do not like about your culture," Teyla said, the smile subdued. "How it has treated you and John in particular. No society should so derail a family."</p><p>"I definitely agree. Many of us do, it's just very slow work to change it. Part of the appeal of Pegasus, of this expedition, was the hope of seeing how other cultures live, of the hope of… I guess, escaping those rules we can't follow," said Elizabeth."I think things should be <em>better</em>. That's… what we're looking for."</p><p>"Yes. That's something I <em>like</em> about your culture," replied Teyla, the smile returned. She stroked at Elizabeth's face and the two of them completely forgot they were in her office for a moment, sharing a kiss to defy the rules Teyla had only just learned of. There would be other conversations about it, Elizabeth was sure, but Teyla would know enough to watch out for trouble. Something Elizabeth probably should have warned her about before. But their tiny corner of the galaxy was new and growing and, she hoped, moving in the right direction.</p><p>A few days later, Elizabeth made her way once more to the infirmary to check on John on her way to breakfast. It was a welcome surprise to find him up and dressed, sitting on the edge of the bed as Carson ran him through one last vitals check. Rodney lurked off to the side, impatient as usual, but looking his own brand of happy.</p><p>"Lizabeth," John greeted, smiling. That was still quite new and Elizabeth felt herself smiling back.</p><p>"John," she replied. She looked between the other two with a nod. "Doctors. It almost looks like the patient is making a break for it."</p><p>"And good riddance," replied Carson. "The man seems to think I run a restaurant, not a medical bay. And now he can get himself tae the cafeteria then."</p><p>John blinked at the call-out. "How'd you know that's where I was going?"</p><p>"What did I jes' say?" Carson sighed and shook his head.</p><p>"Are we calling this recent food-preoccupation a side-effect of the bug?" Elizabeth asked lightly. "Or should we plan on foraging for local food alternatives sooner rather than later, between the Major and Dr. McKay's hypoglycemia?"</p><p>"Hopefully his patterns return to normal in a few days," said Carson with a nod. John shrugged it off.</p><p>"I'll be fine. Just need the usual squares. And to get back to work," he said.</p><p>"Then go and be gone," replied Carson. "My team's done waiting on ye."</p><p>"Can we stop by level fifteen, first?" Rodney asked as John jumped down and collected his jacket. John made a face at him.</p><p>"Fifteen is the wrong direction, McKay-"</p><p>"Yes, but, fifteen has a door I can't get open and you need to go talk to the city about it."</p><p>"No, I don't. I need breakfast. We can go vault-diving later."</p><p>The two carried on arguing about it as they left the room. Elizabeth shook her head at them as they disappeared before turning her attention to the doctor. "Well. Anything we need to watch about this, you think? We don't know the animals around here…"</p><p>Carson nodded. "Aye. The wound on his neck is healing, but there is some residual toxin battling it out. That cream of Teyla's does seem to be helping, so I'm glad for that. Our antibiotics aren't as effective as that seems to have been. I put him on light restrictions until he has full sensation in his hand again."</p><p>"That's- it's been three days! He's still numb?"</p><p>"Whatever that thing was, it's a powerful little bug. I've had some help with the digging, and it seems there's an entire section of the Ancients' database dedicated to these creatures that I'm still working through. They were obsessed with the little buggers it seems. So without the Major in here, poking at bears, maybe I can get somewhere on sorting through it all," Carson replied.</p><p>"Sounds promising," said Elizabeth. She smiled at him and prepared to take her leave to let him return to it. "Good work, Dr. Beckett. And thank you-"</p><p>"Elizabeth, if ye have another moment," the doctor said, reaching out to set a hand on her arm and keep her from leaving just yet. "I wanted to ask ye about some things I've noticed. In all this… research I've been doing these last few months."</p><p>That sounded… almost dangerous and Elizabeth's plans to leave back to work slipped away. "What's that, Carson?"</p><p>"Well, there are a number of… familial markers in common, I've noticed. I've been working with samples from the whole expedition, of course, and there are a lot of points of overlap, naturally," the doctor began, very gradually awkward and hesitant. "But between you and the Major- perhaps most especially…"</p><p>Elizabeth winced and tried to recover from it, setting her shoulders and clasping her hands. "Ah."</p><p>"Now, I'm not meaning to pry. None of what I do is aimed at establishing these maternal or paternal links, but they do arise, these commonalities, you understand…"</p><p>"I understand, Carson," she said. She tried for a smile and probably failed, but Carson was a friend, and he had come into information he likely didn't know what to do with, just in the course of his job, so she couldn't leave him to struggle with it. "So what conclusions would these genetic commonalities ordinarily point you toward? You, or anyone else looking at your work."</p><p>Carson hesitated. "Well, as I said, it suggests a direct family relation. Likely maternal. Between you and the Major. And a very recently shared common ancestor between the Major and General O'Neill, more than just the one to keep the ATA going so strong… I don't mean to pry, but-"</p><p>Elizabeth had somehow kept her suspicions and fuzzy memories tucked away in the part of her brain that parsed out conspiracy theories and wild conjecture that had to be disproven with careful and simple logic. The coincidence had simply been coincidence. O'Neill, like Sheppard, was a statistically common family name, and until that moment, the General's common traits that survived in her memory were just her teenage-self hanging on to things that weren't there.</p><p>But Carson had spent nearly the last six months, on two planets, digging into DNA and genetic code. The probability of coincidence could not hold up against that. It had been staring Elizabeth in the face for months and she now had to deal with it. No more ignoring it, no more hiding it.</p><p>"Until I have an opportunity to discuss this with the General myself, I would appreciate it if you could keep these conclusions quiet and entirely separate from your research," said Elizabeth.</p><p>"What- I see," said Carson, tripping over the questions he was burning to ask. "Does- well, then, does the Major know?"</p><p>Maybe the man didn't mean to pry, it was all necessary to know as their primary care doctor as well as for his work on the ATA. But Elizabeth knew well enough that Carson was a snoop. She offered a nod and a smile.</p><p>"John was adopted by his uncle, Carson. He knows who I am. It is, however, fair to say that none of us knew who the General was," she replied. "And I think, in light of our situation in the Pegasus galaxy, we should… keep things that way."</p><p>"Oh dear."</p><p>"Agreed," replied Elizabeth on a sigh. "I'll try to figure out how to broach the issue with him. It's… an evolving one, so I don't know when he may want to address it. I hate to involve you, but I have to ask that you keep this between us, for now."</p><p>She might as well have asked the man to swallow a live frog, but Carson nodded. Elizabeth knew better than to assume Carson Beckett's poker face would last very long, however. Everything had to happen all at once, she reminded herself as she left a few minutes later. John had come around to <em>not</em> seeing her as the Wicked Witch of the Milky Way only to have the next great reveal step up to drag the title back out days later.</p><p>The rest of the day went about as well as her morning and Elizabeth crawled into bed that night more exhausted than usual. Now it was her turn to avoid the Major, just until she had some idea of how to break the news, and Atlantis had been strangely helpful toward that goal. She was kept running from department to department as something broke or something went wrong, and Bates kept John busy catching him up on what he had missed from the infirmary. They couldn't keep it up forever, but in the meantime, it would do.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Carson wouldn't clear John for off-world again until he was absolutely certain the toxin was out of his system, because alien <em>bugs</em> and human biological ecosystems were a questionable balance, as John well knew. He had seen <em>Alien</em> as a kid; he wasn't going to argue with caution. He was a little bit tired of practicing his paperwork, though, and getting off desk-duty to something useful was high on his priorities list.</p><p>Rather than stew in the boredom, he took breaks throughout the day, just to check on the teams, make sure there were no local disasters. Atlantis was fussy, sometimes she pushed back when Rodney's teams hooked the wires up places they didn't belong, and John thankfully could - so far - smooth that out. Usually all he had to do was show up, too. It was bonus job security <em>and</em> it chafed at Rodney's nose a little. And, while he was stuck on light duty, it kept him from falling asleep at his desk.</p><p>Walking back from helping Rodney sort out a flickering short in the rooms that the archaeologists had taken over, John stopped in the mess for a late lunch. He usually waited to meet up with Rodney, but the man was not going to be available for a while, and in a bad mood when he managed it, so John wasn't going to wait up. Instead, he spotted Elizabeth, sitting on her own for once, out on the balcony.</p><p>There was a hesitation, John actually putting consideration into whether or not he wanted to disturb the woman's rare moment to herself. It meant being social and friendly, not the jerk he had conditioned himself into defaulting to around her. It was easy enough to play nice when they were on the job, but they tended to avoid each other on off hours, so he admittedly needed practice at that.</p><p>It had taken him a few months but he had wrapped his head around it; good or bad, she was his mom, at least half the reason he had made it thirty years on one planet to survive to see any of the others. And she wasn't that terrible of a human being, no matter what the ten-year-old version of him had thought of her. Elizabeth wasn't Leila Sheppard, and she wasn't a threat to his step-mom's memory after so long, either. John really did want to know his mom, at least a little, before either one of them shuffled off out in a foreign galaxy.</p><p>Besides, she had missed out on hundreds of interrupted moments of hard-earned peace because some asshole had decided she couldn't keep him as a baby. She was owed an interrupted peace. Revenge for all those quiet breakfasts and solitary bathroom trips she had enjoyed without an ankle biter banging on the door. She was lucky John was an adult with boundaries who had outgrown demanding attention. Sort of. Mostly.</p><p>"Hey," John greeted, surprising her as he slid his tray down on the table, across from hers, and sat down. "We gotta talk."</p><p>Distracted and suddenly concerned, Elizabeth blinked up at him. "O-kay… about what?"</p><p>"This attitude you've got about football. It's American tradition. It's not right, you up here representing the country and not her favorite pass-times," John replied. He crunched into a carrot just to finalize that declaration. Elizabeth let out a surprised laugh as she processed the taunt.</p><p>"Well, for the record, I represent that country, as well as a few <em>others</em>, most of which consider <em>football</em> to mean another game entirely," she pointed out. She shook her head in mock sympathy. "I can't play favorites, John. I'm sorry. You're on your own convincing Teyla of the value of American college football."</p><p>"She's the only one on my team who doesn't get it," John complained. He was quite happy that Elizabeth could play back, though. "You could at least try. Trade you a Gretzky game for it."</p><p>The woman's smile faded as she prodded her fork at her salad. "I thought you didn't like hockey?"</p><p>"Maybe a slight exaggeration," John said with a shrug. "I brought ten disks with football, three with hockey. But if McKay asks, those three were an accident."</p><p>"Ah. Got it," said Elizabeth. And John was pretty sure she did. And she didn't mind. If she was happy with Teyla, he didn't guess she was going to start browbeating him for grandkids any time soon. She seemed to like Rodney better than she had any right to like John, anyway. There was a moment of companionable quiet as he dug into his lunch. In the quiet, his curiosity caught.</p><p>"Did you really meet my dad at a hockey game?" he asked. He was only half sure he wanted to know the answer. Elizabeth glanced up at him, brow furrowed, like she was trying to read him. "You don't gotta tell me. I was just curious," he added.</p><p>Elizabeth stewed on it a moment before nodding. "High school, yes. I was a freshman. Didn't know what the word <em>varsity</em> meant, at the time. But hockey, that I knew."</p><p>"That's hard to believe," John said, treading careful. "You're our linguist."</p><p>"Believe it," Elizabeth replied. "I didn't learn Latin until I was exiled to California."</p><p>John stared at her, jaw slack until he realized what his face was doing. He couldn't be understanding her. He was probably hearing her wrong. But what if he wasn't?</p><p>"So then… it's kinda my fault we got out here at all, huh?" he asked, the question burning at his brain. "You said <em>exiled</em>, that was… That was because of, well, <em>me</em>, right?"</p><p>Elizabeth nodded, sitting back in her chair and crossing her arms as she considered it. "Yes and very much no. It wasn't your <em>fault</em>. It's just what was done, what I had to do. I barely was allowed to finish my freshman year, my parents wanted me sent somewhere safe. I didn't get to say goodbye, I was just shipped off the day after the doctor's appointment, almost a month before summer break."</p><p>"That sucks," John said, surprised by the story. Elizabeth shrugged it off.</p><p>"But you are right. I was stuck inside at my Aunt's house. I didn't know anyone. All summer and then most of my next school year. I just… spent it on languages. Latin, Spanish, started in on Russian because my uncle was career military… They set me up at the boarding school in LA. I never considered it, but… you are right. I wouldn't have had the opportunities at learning languages or even an interest in politics if I hadn't left home that summer," she said. She actually smiled again as she looked over at him. "That's certainly one way of looking at it."</p><p>"Little creepy, not gonna lie," said John, scrunching his nose. He poked at his sandwich but was still a little stunned. "A kid ruins your life by showing up when you're a kid, and then shows up thirty years later to do it all over again because he sat in a stupid chair. And I'm the kid."</p><p>"Dominos don't fall backwards, John. You didn't do anything. That's just… life. Butterfly effect," said Elizabeth, shaking her head. "I guess maybe I was just impatient, had to get a start on things before I quite knew what I was doing."</p><p>"Make the mistakes early and you've got more time to grow," John said, nodding, remembering what his <em>adopted</em> mom had told him she had learned from his <em>mom</em>. Maybe something John had lived up to anyway, without realizing it along the way. He had dropped out of UCLA and switched to Stanford, made Major a few years early and then nearly lost it, and sat his ass in a chair and ended up in another galaxy… The list went on a lot longer and he wasn't even thirty-four years old yet.</p><p>"And apparently mistakes aren't actually mistakes. Just things that we don't have a chance to plan for," said Elizabeth, gently correcting John's self-conscious implication that he had been a mistake. He looked out at the empty balcony around them. This was certainly not a topic he had planned to end up on when he sat down; he probably wouldn't have sat down if he'd been able to see the future then, but there he was now.</p><p>"If you didn't get to go back to school, you never told the hockey guy," he realized. Elizabeth sighed, a visible wince on her face.</p><p>"No, I didn't," she said.</p><p>"He wasn't on my birth certificate," John said. Again Elizabeth shook her head.</p><p>"No, he wasn't."</p><p>They went quiet again as John thought it over. Then he shook his head and attacked his sandwich. "This is… weird."</p><p>"That is accurate," Elizabeth agreed. Her appetite didn't seem to have come back, though, and she stayed leaned back in her chair, arms crossed in her jacket against the breeze. She watched him, the frown back on her face. "Do you want to know his name?"</p><p>That's when John's appetite seemed to give up on him. He already had a dad, a guy named Patrick Sheppard, who he was mad at seventy percent of the time, but he loved anyway. And a younger brother who fell into the same category. He knew them, even if they were in another galaxy. The hockey guy… Well, John knew he had the ATA and he had been captain of a high school hockey team. He didn't feel like he was missing out on anything. After a little while, John shook his head. He tried his sandwich again in the quiet. Finally he shrugged as he glanced up at Elizabeth.</p><p>"I've got my own name," he said around a mouthful of turkey. "I don't need his."</p><p>Elizabeth nodded thoughtfully at that before offering a slight smile. She nodded. "Fair enough."</p><p>"Besides, he's got shitty taste in sports. Nothing in common. Wrong galaxy, even," John went on. Elizabeth rolled her eyes.</p><p>"The <em>entire</em> <em>state</em> of Minnesota would disagree," she replied.</p><p>"Except about the galaxy part," said John.</p><p>Elizabeth let out a patient sigh. "I don't plan on consulting the state about the galaxy difference, no."</p><p>"That being established… I'll let you borrow my hockey disks if you'll talk Teyla around on football." John wasn't giving up on his original quest, and he was just as determined to bail on the details of his ancestry.</p><p>"Then I'll talk her into hockey. You're on your own with the pigskins," replied Elizabeth, her lips tugging up in a grin.</p><p>"Hey! Come on..."</p><p>"John. You do know what I do for a living, don't you?"</p><p>He knew she was a world-class negotiator and John couldn't talk her into a football game if his life depended on it. "Fine. But next movie night, you can't steal her unless you watch the game with us first."</p><p>Elizabeth arched an eyebrow at the invitation. "What if you started her out with soccer? I'm sure you have at least one soccer game in that DVD wallet…"</p><p>John waved it off. "I do, but that's beside the point."</p><p>"Uh huh. Trust me. <em>Sports</em> have to make sense before football will. Start with soccer. And then work from there," said Elizabeth. "Or maybe find out what the Athosians play for sports, see if there's any overlap-"</p><p>"That's work, like <em>dating</em>-level work. That's where <em>you</em> come in," John replied. "<em>You</em> figure out the words to make it make sense. <em>I</em> just provide the DVDs. <em>That's</em> how we do this."</p><p>Elizabeth slowly cracked up and started laughing as she sank back in her chair. John wasn't sure if that meant anything good for his case, but he liked the sound of it. Elizabeth didn't laugh enough. He was somehow proud of himself for dragging it out of her. <em>That</em> was what he had wanted to ask for when he was stuck back on the Jumper, for more time to figure out how to make his mom laugh. He had stressed her out enough along the way. John was calling a do-over.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>~*the end*~</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
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    <p>Tah dah! that's the fic! So, to give credit where it is due... Kudos to pebbles1971 and HilaryParker54 for the beta halps and general handholding.</p><p>This fic was the result of a prompt, so I wanted to include the prompt here, too, because I think it was genius.</p><hr/><p>Keeping it in the Family by Anonymous<br/>Fandom: Stargate Atlantis<br/>Not Rated<br/>Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings<br/>Gen</p><p>Tags: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, John Sheppard &amp; Elizabeth Weir, Elizabeth Weir, John Sheppard, Family Feels</p><p>Summary:<br/>Just want some family feels where Elizabeth Weir is somehow John Sheppard's mom. How does this change canon events? If this is an AU, how does it affect their dynamic?</p><p>DNW: Explicit content. I'm okay with any ships for Elizabeth or John, but would prefer sexy times to be implied with the main focus being the family relationships.</p><p>URL: http://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/504311392191643649/750085063915339826/ba1141384abff4ac8493d911c245a0c9.png</p><p>
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</p><hr/><p>Further comments were made to the effect that it looked like, from the picture, that John got dragged to picture day by his two moms. And that kinda stuck in my head for a lot of this fic. LOL! So, big big kudos to the originator of the prompt cuz this was fun!!</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>EDIT to add</strong> - This started out a prompt fic, so... Since there WILL BE MORE (seriously, i have outlines) I am gonna go out on a limb and say, more prompts welcome!! It's actually fun for me to try to put puzzles like this together, so if there's stuff you wanna see, comment away! Either here or send me a note on tumblr ( spacecadetdhdly ) and maybe something will catch... No guarantees, but it'd sure be fun to try!</p>
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